Senior Section

After camping with the guides the other week, i got into talking with one of the guide leaders about how it is apparent that a Senior section is needed in the local area, a couple of the girls on the camp wanted to continue with guiding but, were quite a lot older than the ones that had recently joined the group. It was something that i was interested in taking up last year, but nothing ever came out of it. I think the main problem being that commuting last year left me worn out and time-less. Hopefully this year, living in London, commuting out of London once a month wont be such a problem.
I went to normal guides session tonight to present the idea of there being a senior section, unfortunately there were only three people there that are eligible to move up a group. I bought in my laptop with a DVD explaining what it was about (To be honest I'm not even sure myself what is supposed to go on in the senior section at all) the DVD suggests that it will be packed with trips around the world and awards but there isn't anything to suggest what is supposed to be happening in a monthly meet up. I did have a chat with a lady in the girl guiding head office in London who was quite helpful. What she said was that the Senior Section was about a number of things, but mainly about understanding social responsibility (moving onto being a brownie leader etc) and having peer support through exams and leaving school, basically somewhere to have a bit of fun and chat. A lot of the projects like the duke of Edinburgh award and the queen guide award are to be done on their own- with my support in organising things and talking about how to do it. My initial ideas are to maybe arrange a trip every other month that is concerned with one of the girls personal interests, so as a group the girls get to learn more about each other and then in between these trips just have sessions to talk about what people are doing and to give help with organising time, and the guiding projects/ exams.
Its early days though, and it all comes down to the amount of girls interested in coming on a regular basis- which directly links to the amount of funding for trips etc- there are still guiding fees to pay.