The Senior
Section
The name "Senior Section" covers all Guides
between the ages of 14 and 26 : Guides, Rangers, and Young Leaders
as well as young Guiders of any section (you can hold a full warrant
from the age of 18.) Although Guides are officially aged 10/11 to
14, you don't HAVE to leave Guides as soon as you are 14, and you
don't HAVE to move to a Senior Section unit at any time.
Most Senior Section members are, however, members
of Senior units - usually called Rangers although they can actually
call themselves anything they like : the most usual alternative is
to call themselves a "Look Wider Group."
Ranger units are self-governing : although they need
a warranted Guider to take overall charge, the programme planning
and meeting organisation is the responsibility of the Rangers themselves.
Inexperienced units or groups with very young Rangers may need more
or less direction from their Guider but the Guider's role is just
that - to Guide and support. Very large units may also prefer to delegate
to a committee as it may be otherwise impossible to ever come to a
decision!
The official Girlguiding UK Senior Section programme
is called "Look
Wider," after a passage in one of Baden-Powell's speeches
: "when you look - look WIDE; and even when you think you are
looking wide - LOOK WIDER STILL. " The Look wider programme has recently
been revised and offers a very flexible and up-to-date approach, with
something to interest everyone. There is an excellent section about
Look Wider on the NetGuides
website (click
here to visit) so there is really no need to
reproduce it here!
Like all other Guide sections, the Senior Section
is a uniformed organisation. Guide uniform these days is very casual
(and some would say no longer very "uniform" ) and easy
to wear : jeans are acceptable for all but the most formal occasions,
and there is a choice of uniform tops - the most popular seem to be
the rugby shirt and the tailored shirt, although many girls still
prefer to wear the "old" sweatshirt or polo shirt. Some
units wear neckers to distinguish their unit, some don't. It's a matter
of choice for both the unit and the individual. To see pictures of
the Ranger and Young Leader uniform choices, click
here; of course, Senior Section members who are
also unit Guiders usually wear Guider uniform.
Metal badges are worn on "Badge Tabs" (like the Guiders'
tabs, only a different colour) : usually the order is Promise badge
(turquoise for a Ranger, white for a YL, although some girls like
to wear their original brass Promise badge if they're old enough to
have had one) County Badge (ours is a white rose) and any other badges
entitled to be worn : World Badge, any trefoils earned, Queen's Guide,
etc., and after six months' service, YLs are entitled to wear a white
bar as well, (in theory, up to up to a maximum of five badges ......)
| THINKING OF SETTING UP A RANGER UNIT
YOURSELF? Then read on.....
(from Holderness Rangers)
To start up a new unit there is (unfortunately) the standard
red tape to get through : first of all you need a willing victim,
sorry adult, who is willing to act as Guider. Technically an
adult is anyone over the age of 18 and if you can find an 18-year-old
who has a full Guiders' warrant (and they do exist, or so I've
been told) then you're home and dry.
IF your County Commissioner/Ranger Adviser/Senior Section Adviser
agree to your choice.
In actual practice beggars can't be choosers so anyone who is
willing to take the job on should be welcomed with open arms
(and the more experience she has of dealing with your county
hierarchy, the better!)
If you can persuade your new Guider (or Guiders
- you never know your luck!) to sort out all the paperwork and
get the new unit registered while you sort out the details of
the programme etc., so much the better.
You need to decide where, when and how often to meet. If you're
a small unit, you may be able to meet in someone's house, or
organise a rota of houses, etc. Those sort of details depend
entirely on your unit and what you want. I know of one unit
which only "meets" occasionally, by telephone, to arrange irregular
outings together, but that's what suits them.
We build our programme round the Look Wider
scheme (check out NetGuides
for details) to give us a bit of structure but we're very flexible.
We plan a term at a time and always include a bit of "formal"
Guide-y stuff, several excuses to eat (Pancake Day....Chinese
New Year..... Halloween..... everybody's birthdays...... and
we always eat out at a restaurant at least once a term, sometimes
more often) outside trips (cinema.... theatre .... ten-pin-bowling....ice-skating)
.... camping and/or activity weekends/weeks.... community work)
and fundraising for various charities as well as our own trips
abroad.
All the girls in our unit enjoy camping and
some have a LOT of camping experience : they're a pretty mixed
bunch, some have been in Guiding since they were Rainbows and
others have come straight in as Rangers, but they keep coming
back so we must be doing something right. Our unit meetings
are pretty informal : controversially, we don't insist on uniform
unless it's a formal "Guide" occasion (enrolments,
Division events, official presentations etc.) Depending on the
off-site activity, we may or may not wear uniform : fundraising
we do (it makes it clear who you are and you also get more money
out of the punters that way) but visits to the cinema etc.,
and certainly restaurants, we don't. Basically, we "play it
by ear" and it seems to work. |
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