A how-to guide for volunteers: interest badges
Guidance for volunteers helping girls do interest badges
Everything you need to know about helping girls do interest badges and signing them off.
What’s involved in doing an interest badge? How do you sign them off as a volunteer? How do you explain it to parents and carers? We’ll answer those questions and more in this how-to guide for volunteers.
With 72 new interest badges now available in honour of the programme’s 7th birthday, there’s more than ever before!
How girls complete interest badges
- Girls pick an interest badge to do (at home or in their unit by themselves or with others) and when they do them.
- They decide how to complete the 3 challenges.
- Once they’ve done it, they’ll share with you what they did. You can then sign it off in their badge book and award them their well-earned badge.
Doing interest badges in units
Girls said they enjoy completing interest badges more when they can choose to do them with others if they want to. To give more flexibility to everyone, you can now complete interest badges in your unit.
You can try:
- Getting girls to vote on which interest badge they want to do as a group.
- Completing or starting 2 badge challenges in the unit and asking them to complete the final one at home.
- If you’re doing badges in the unit, share your plans with parents to make sure that they don’t complete the same one just before you run it!
- Hold badge sessions, where everyone works on different interest badges.
- Run interest badges on camp or district days!
Why not give it a go? Find the new interest badges in our 2025/26 programme planner (Excel file, 82.3KB) and get organised for the upcoming term.
Badge books
We have 2 different badge books for Rainbows, Brownies and Guides:
- Big badge books – these are the badge books for our original interest badges for Rainbows, Brownies and Guides.
- Little badge books – these are smaller versions of the big badge book and only contain the new interest badges that launched on Monday 21 July 2025.
You can buy both badge books from our online shop.
Badge books for Rangers are slightly different. The original 18 Ranger badges can be found on the badge finder. And they can be recorded in their record book.
Rangers told us they would like a physical badge book. So, Rangers have a little badge book for the new interest badges! Email [email protected] to let us know what you and your Rangers think about having a book.
How do girls use their badge books?
Girls might ask leaders to sign their badge books to show which interest badges have been completed. They can also help track which other parts of the programme have been ticked off (such as unit meeting activities or skills builders).
In the little badge books for all sections, there is a tracker to tick off their progress towards their gold award.
Signing off interest badges
As a leader, you could follow these 5 steps to sign off a badge:
- Chat to girls about what they’ve done for their interest badges.
- Make time in unit meetings to look through evidence of completed activities.
- Decide if what they’ve done meets the challenges of the badge.
- Order the badge from our online shop and present it to them.
- Record the interest badge on GO.
But remember, feel free to make it your own! You might even ask girls to email evidence of badges to your unit email address so you can see it before you speak to them.
What does ‘signing off’ mean?
It’s the final stage of girls earning their badge. It’s when you – the volunteer – look through all the work they’ve done and let them know whether you’re happy for them to earn the badge.
You know your unit best. What’s easier for some girls is more challenging for others. That’s why our interest badges are designed to be flexible. As their leader, you can choose whether something needs to be scaled up or down depending on a girl’s abilities.
What counts as ‘evidence’?
Evidence might be something physical that a girl brings in, or be photos or videos sent by email from a parent or carer. Attendance at an event can also count towards some interest badges. Not going to be at the event with them? Ask them to take a photo of them there or get them to chat you through what they did.
Girls might bring in what they’ve made, from scrapbooks, to junk models, crafts to sculpture, or show evidence that it happened. Sometimes it’s even yummy cake!
When do I present a badge?
When it comes to presenting badges, it’s completely up to you! Some units...
- Wait until the end of term to award badges all at the same time.
- Do it the week after it’s been signed off.
- Plan an ‘awards night’.
And along with presenting badges, leaders and units will decide if they want to create their own traditions to go alongside it, such as standing in a particular way, creating an arch, singing a song, and making the promise salute.
You can also get a selection of certificates from our shop to use.
Common challenges and how to deal with them
Struggling to sign off an interest badge? Here are some common challenges you might have to deal with as a volunteer and how to handle them.
With busy unit meetings and term plans packed to the brim with fun stuff, it can feel like there’s no time at all to spend on signing off interest badges.
- Ask parents or carers and girls to send evidence to a unit email, saving you time going through the evidence yourself during a unit meeting.
- Plan 10 minutes before a unit meeting to be interest badge time. Go through emails then or ask girls to show up a bit earlier than usual.
- Ask someone else to help out at a meeting to run an activity. Use that time to step back and sign off badges. If you have young leaders they could run something to give you some extra time.
- Split the task with your volunteer team.
If you think a girl could’ve done more to earn a badge, it’s important to be kind and sensitive when you bring it up. Every girl is different, and some may need more help than others.
Here are some prompts to help:
- Let’s have a look at the challenges together. What challenges have you completed?
- I think you’ve got more to say about this challenge, want to bring it back next week?
- Have a go at doing [XYZ] and then I’ll be able to sign it off.
Remember interest badges can be adapted to suit each girl’s ability. For example, a challenge within the aviation badge is to name 50 things that fly. If this is going to be challenging for them to do, they could name 25 and draw them (or find pictures) instead of writing a list.
This can be a tricky conversation, but it’s all about finding out from the girl what she enjoyed and got up to while doing an interest badge. Here’s some prompts to help.
- What did you do for this challenge?
- What did you like or dislike about this challenge?
- How did it make you feel?
- What are you doing in this picture?
- Did anyone help you to do this?
It might also be a good idea to chat to the parent or carer and encourage them to take on a more supportive role rather than doing it themselves. It’s totally fine for parents and carers to support girls in completing badges – it just has to be the girl's own work. For example, if there's a badge the requires going out for a Rainbow – we'd expect a trusted adult to be with them. If on this trip they had to take photos of 10 trees, it would be acceptable for the parent to take the photo but the girl to tell them what photo to take.
Sometimes girls find a new passion within a badge and create some wonderful stuff. It could be that this badge really let the girl's ability and creativity thrive.
Tips for talking to parents and carers
Some parents and carers are really involved in what badges their child are doing. Others leave it up to the volunteers.
Here’s how you can involve them in doing interest badges:
- Let them know what interest badges might be good to do at home, or whether you’re doing any in the unit that term.
- Tell them how you like to sign off interest badges. Do you prefer taking time out of unit meetings? Will you ask them to send interest badge work to your unit email?
- Set clear expectations for what you expect to see. Take into account every girl’s individual needs and share examples of completed badges with them.
- Ask parents to come in and run interest badges in your unit. Their skill set or passion might perfectly align with something your girls want to do.
