Guidance on activities
What you need to consider when planning and running an activity to make it safe
It's vital that we run activities as safely as possible.
Everyone working with children and young people must take extra care to make sure they don't come to any harm.
Working with instructors and helpers
Make sure instructors, helpers and parents have the right checks.
Activity instructors
If the activity involves one-to-one unsupervised instruction, the instructor requires a Disclosure and Barring Service check (DBS). The activity provider is responsible for carrying out the check and providing written confirmation of this.
Everyone taking part in guiding activities must agree to follow our safeguarding policy. Check our guidance on having visitors at your meetings and the unit safeguarding guidelines.
Helpers and parents
All volunteers aged 18 or over who are staying overnight at a residential event must have completed the recruitment and vetting procedure - including a disclosure check. Non-member volunteers must be checked too and assigned the role of district, division or county helper on GO.
Helpers and parents taking part in guiding activities must agree to follow the Girlguiding safeguarding policy. Make sure they have read this policy.
Updated activities
Here's a list of activities that have been updated since they were originally released, and the reason why they were updated. Please make sure you're using the most up-to-date version of an activity before you deliver it. You can download all skills builders and unit meeting activities for free from our online shop. If an interest badge has had a major change we'll re-issue the relevant page. This will be noted on the badge book page on our web shop.
If you have any questions please email [email protected].
| Activity title | Where it can be found | Year updated | Reason for update |
| Dis-solve-it | Rainbows UMA pack 10 | 2025 | Updated safety advice |
| Happy habits interest badge | Guides little badge book | 2025 | Updated wording |
| Can you see in the dark? | Camp skills builder stage 2 | 2023 | Updated instructions |
| Food for thought | Feel good skills builder stage 1 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Chop chop | Feel good skills builder stage 4 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Baking, it's a science | Innovate skills builder stage 4 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Wild cooking | Camp skills builder stage 5 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Sauce up your life | Live smart skills builder stage 3 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Nutrition mission | Live smart skills builder stage 4 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Feeling hot, hot, hot | Live smart skills builder stage 5 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Flameless food | Live smart skills builder stage 6 | 2021 | Updated safety advice |
| Can you hear me? | First aid skills builder stage 2 | 2021 | Updated first aid advice |
| Blazing burns | First aid skills builder stage 3 | 2021 | Updated first aid advice |
Recruiting volunteers to help
Involving parents and other volunteers makes sure we can do these exciting guiding activities.