Adapting the programme for your virtual unit

How to deliver the Girlguiding programme virtually

Bring the fun and adventure of our programme to girls – no matter how you’re meeting

If you’re running a virtual unit, you can still keep delivering great guiding, help girls earn badges and take part in programme activities.

On our adventures at home hub, you’ll find a whole range of games, challenges and videos that can be used in virtual meetings or girls can also choose to do on their own.

You can also use any Girlguiding programme resources you have, such as skills builders, unit meeting activities and badge books. Some activities might need to be adapted to be used in a virtual meeting.

Adapting activities - spreadsheets of suggestions

We've provided some adjustment ideas for lots of programme activities.

Virtual meeting adjustments

Meeting online with your unit means you need to get creative with activities and find new ways to get the group working together. We’ve come up with some ideas for how activities can be adapted to help you bring the Girlguiding programme to your virtual meetings.

Remember, these are just some ideas to get your started – if you want to try something different or need to make changes to suit the girls in your unit, go ahead!

Adapted activity cards

Although our adjustment ideas spreadsheets are great starting points to adapting activities, we know that they can be a bit overwhelming, and that it can still be tricky to think of ways to adapt activities that we haven’t covered yet.

That’s why we’ve annotated some of our existing activity cards to include suggested adaptations for virtual guiding. We’ve released one annotated skills builder and unit meeting activity (UMA) per section, and they’re available for free. We hope that these will be useful to you and great examples of how you can make similar adjustments to lots of other activities.

UMAs

Skills builders

Programme plans

We've created a few different kinds of programme plans for each section, to give you a hand in deciding what activities will work with the way you're meeting.

Programme plans for virtual guiding

These 6-week plans include activity and programme suggestions for virtual meetings.

Blended offer programme plans

These 6-week programme plans are written for those units who deliver guiding flexibly. This is where you make guiding work for you and your unit. This could be through how often you meet, how long, and in what way.

Using programme resources

Copying and sharing activity cards

When running virtual meetings you can copy and share unit meeting activity cards and skills builder activity cards with girls and their parents or carers. You can also share any extra activity information, so they can do activities at home.

You can only share cards with members and volunteers in your own unit and if you have the original unit meeting or skills builder activity card.

Adapting activities

You might need to adjust programme activities to make them more suitable for doing at home, with limited supplies or in a virtual meeting.

If you do make any changes, make sure your updates are clearly labelled with your unit name or logo, so everyone can see who made the adaptation.

Interest badges and badge books

Information about interest badges in the badge books cannot be copied or shared directly.

We’ve created badge planning sheets to help leaders and families to support girls to complete interest badges at home if they’re part of a virtual unit.

We don’t have online versions of our badge and award books because the books are designed as physical resources, to support girls as they work towards interest badges and awards and help them track their progress. Much of the quality of the books would be lost in a digital version.

You can buy badge books and other programme resources from the Girlguiding shop.

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