Girlguiding Ribble Valley - June's Featured Cause

Girlguiding Ribble Valley provides weekly meetings and additional activities for over 700 young members, throughout the Ribble Valley in Lancashire. We are proud to be open to all girls, regardless of background, ability and beliefs. Girlguiding empowers girls to find their voice and be their best through high-quality, girl-led programmes delivered by inspirational leaders. We do this through a wide variety of activities, residential events and our regular meetings, which help girls, young women, and adults grow their skills and confidence.

Girlguiding Ribble Valley has Rainbow units for girls age 5-7, Brownie units for girls age 7-10, Guide units for girls age 10-14 and Senior Section and Ranger units for girls age 14+. Girlguiding Ribble Valley is entirely run by volunteers who give their time to give girls opportunities for fun, friendship, challenge, learning and adventure.

Our leaders complete first aid and leadership qualifications, ensuring that they are equipped to successfully run our units throughout the Ribble Valley. Many leaders hold additional qualifications, reflecting further skills and training. Our leaders and those around them benefit from these additional skills outside Girlguiding. We are open to all adults (notwithstanding recruitment checks for safeguarding purposes) and we have a lot of additional adult volunteers who also build their skills and benefit themselves, our young members and the community.

We give girls support through activities to build resilience and challenge, which for our older young members may mean completing awards such as Duke of Edinburgh, Queen’s Guide or the Commonwealth Award. All our Young Leaders learn leadership and management skills through what they do.

We give a huge number of opportunities to try new things, including recently STEM activities, increasing physical activity, CPR First Aid training and whole host of activities at camps and residentials such as bungee trampoline and activities at height. Our members in all sections may attend camps and other residential trips, which vary from a sleepover in their normal meeting place to an International trip – one of our Brownie units recently visited Denmark and in February over 40 members of our group went to Switzerland for a week. These trips give girls and young women real independence and responsibility for themselves and each other, and while having fun and building friendships they learn an immense amount of life skills.

We get out and about in the community, which is at the core of our values.  Our members invest and support their communities for charities, people and the environment.  Most of our units do fundraising for other charities, which in the last year has included support to the local food bank, raising money for cancer charities, Guide Dogs, British Heart Foundation and more. Our members have a real interest in the community and also go out and visit, or ask visitors in, such as visiting the fire station, Dementia Friends links and having Guide and Police dogs come to visit.

We love to support our local community and commit to giving back to our community.

We are a network/ family who support each other to be the best they can be. Not only is Girlguiding a safe space for the girls, it’s a safe and social space for the adults. Volunteering with Girlguiding is an incredibly rewarding experience and we know that volunteering helps us all.

We are involved in and take part in programmes that really look after girls’ well being and mental health. As well as outdoor activities and providing what we hope is a pressure free space, we can access specialist initiatives such as Free Being Me, promoting Body Confidence, and have a Peer Education program, in which our older young members (14+) train to run activities with those under 14. We aim to address issues with our members such as bullying and social media challenges.

All in all, we firmly believe that we help our members develop their social and personal skills, raise aspirations and provide unique activities, through which our members enjoy fun, adventure and friendship. Mental health improvements and business acumen have been associated with those that have been in Guiding and Scouting, and we think all our members benefit from our organisation. We benefit the wider community by our engagement with it, and our activities within the community, but our biggest benefit is helping our members develop into community minded, caring, individuals who want to change the world for the better, and know their actions make a difference.

We are delighted to use TheGivingMachine and the extra donations are very much valued. We use them towards various activities for our young members, most recently contributing to fundraising for an incredible trip to Switzerland for 34 young people and 7 leaders. This trip provided fun, friendship and skills development, and all our members benefitted from activities within it and being part of the team. Moving forward we are looking to support more events, for adults as well as our young members with the monies raised. Many thanks to all our contributors using TheGivingMachine, and any that will support us from being Cause of the Month.  Last but not least, thanks to The Giving Machine staff for making this whole enterprise happen to support so many charities.

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