As you are probably aware, the closure of BGO is now complete. It’s taken me personally a long while to get to a point where I have felt able to make any sense of this, and the closure of the TACS too. I have absolutely no concrete proof of the following – it’s just my own interpretation of the reasoning behind the decisions made by Girlguiding regarding these two previously integral parts of the organisation.
To start with the decision makers themselves - the senior leadership team and the trustees. They are undoubtedly women at the top of their game. They are academically successful and experienced individuals in their chosen fields, many also have various honours to recognise their successes. In short, they embody many of the outwardly visible characteristics that, as an organisation, Girlguiding strives to engender in its young members. They have every right to confidently believe in their abilities to steer the organisation in the right direction for a sustainable and successful future – they are assured of their own abilities and I do believe that they are also doing their best. This does bring with it a couple of very significant issues though. The detachment from the ‘on the ground’ activity in the organisation, and those delivering it, cannot help but be huge. Is it any wonder that the trustees would believe that those of us without their qualifications and experience simply won’t be able to fully understand the issues facing Girlguiding? All the incidences of being told we ‘wouldn’t understand’ illustrate this, and I recall a conversation with a trustee, long before there was any inkling of recent events, in which she told me that she found the hardest thing to do was to make sure that she put aside what the impact of the decisions being made would be on a girl attending a unit, and see things in the ‘bigger picture’, but that this was always their brief. I thought at the time it was completely wrong that she was told to do this, but I admit I didn’t foresee everything it could lead to.
If we take this disconnect from the membership as true, then we can easily see how the heritage of Girlguiding, which is so important to huge numbers of the grass roots membership, is so much less significant to the decision makers who are so very, if not entirely, focussed on the future.
Imagine then, how little invested in BGO and the TACS this would make the decision makers, and then add to that the fact that both of these elements of Girlguiding were lead, to a much greater extent than any other, by ‘ordinary’ members rather than by staff. There are a couple of obvious potential risks with this state of affairs as far as the decision makers would be concerned. Firstly, members who are making decisions might/will depart from the directions given by the organisation as a whole, and secondly, where those departures are subsequently successful, there is the potential for embarrassment and that it will fuel wider dissent when the organisation wants to implement its own 'central' decisions. It’s also much harder to quietly relabel these members as volunteers – they know from experience that they have had a meaningful say in the running of their region/TAC and they are extremely unlikely to feel that they should give that up. They are also considerably more likely to grasp the implications of the relabelling exercise. If there is any comfort to be had in this whole sorry story, I think it is that BGO was extremely well run, (excellent financial management, an exemplary safeguarding record and genuine care for all individuals involved), but sadly that probably made it more of a concern to Girlguiding rather than less, because it very visibly demonstrated the abilities, insight and efficacy of unsupervised teams of members.
Far from being a financial burden too, closing BGO meant that Girlguiding could fundamentally seize their assets, and they have done so to the tune of just over £144,700 – giving a quick win for a tricky financial year. The sale of the TACs will obviously also generate income in the short term.
And so to the future! As an organisation Girlguiding has to deal with a reduced number of volunteers, and a reduced number of hours each of those volunteers is willing to give. I daresay that this is the situation for most/all other voluntary organisations too, but I do wonder if it ever occurred to the decision makers that there is in fact, a significant difference in the number of hours a volunteer is willing to give, compared to the number of hours someone who truly feels that they are a member of something is?
Overwhelmingly, I personally believe that Girlguiding has changed fundamentally, from an organisation which truly sought to help girls and young women develop the confidence and skills to go out into the world and be the very best that they as an individual could be, to an organisation which sees itself as representing girls and young women and seeks to speak for them. The Girlguiding that I joined was not trying to be a political voice, it was trying to empower girls and young women as individuals to be that themselves in their future lives – if, and only if, they themselves wanted to be. Being a member lead organisation allowed that. Every leader bought something different to the party. Girls could find a unit that suited them and that might be very focussed on being outdoors, or a unit that loved craft!
The Girlguiding of today seems to be striving to be streamlined, glossy and professional in appearance, and to a large degree, it is succeeding in that mission. It’s a personal opinion of course, but for me I am sad to say, there is more lost than gained in that transformation and I have never wanted to be part of an organisation that speaks for its members without genuinely listening to them.
As a new volunteer, many years ago, I was hooked by the noisy, joyous chaos of a room full of 5 and 6 yr old Rainbows having fun and learning through play and what was in essence, experimentation. Safety was a priority of course, but the rigidity of an award system was gloriously absent and the girls made decisions that really meant something to them, like what game to play next, where the term trip should be to, and what to do next week – no trying to discern whether the mandatory activities within a theme can be done in the space available, let alone whether or not they will be to the taste of the girls in the unit at the time. Both of my daughters were completely hooked too and they learnt invaluable life skills, always having great fun along the way. Guiding gave balance to their school lives, as Rainbows all the way through to Rangers, and as a Mum of very academic children, that was what I was looking for. I can no longer recommend Girlguiding as this unique, supportive and nurturing space, as I once did. There are a wide variety of organisations that value and praise individual achievement more than effort, kindness and working for the common good and that don’t carry the historical organisational trauma that Girlguiding now does, following the implementation of its recent decisions, so I can’t see anything that makes Girlguiding stand out any more. As adults my daughters’ experiences, and the changes to the organisation that they have seen, have lead them both to leave too – ironically Girlguiding helped to teach them to recognise when something no longer aligned with their principles and beliefs and that they should act accordingly.
Although I am no longer a part of Girlguiding, I continue to have the utmost respect for all those leaders who are managing to put aside their dismay at the current direction of travel for the organisation, and who are continuing to deliver activities to girls in their units, doing their best to extract from the programme that which can help girls grow and flourish. The example you set of your own personal principles and ideology is incredibly valuable. May you triumph and lead Girlguiding, currently an organisation steered by a senior leadership team, (mostly appointed not elected), to regain its identity as a movement, built of its members and directed from within by them!