New programme adaptations

In response to your feedback, we’ve released new resources to help you adapt even more programme activities.

We’ve added more adjustment ideas to our activity spreadsheets, and created new materials to help you run virtual meetings in the way that’s best for your unit. We’ve also added more suggested socially-distanced adaptations. We want you to have everything you need to plan for the future, and run your meetings safely when we are allowed to meet in person again.

All of the resources below are available in the same place on our website. Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve added and why.

New activity adjustments and Pack 9

Last year, we released spreadsheets for every section detailing which Skills builders and UMAs could be adapted for virtual and socially distanced guiding, along with practical suggestions of adaptations that might work for your unit.

We heard your feedback that there weren’t enough adaptation ideas across all areas of the programme. We have now updated these spreadsheets to include more adaptation suggestions, particularly for Be Well and Have Adventures themes. All the new additions are highlighted in yellow so that you can see what’s new. Remember these are just suggestions – if you have a great idea of how to adapt an activity, then please do!

We’ve also added suggestions on how to adapt activities in Pack 9, our newly released suite of UMAs! The majority of UMAs in Pack 9 can be adapted for virtual guiding. All of them can be adapted for socially-distanced guiding except one in the Rangers pack, which requires girls to whisper to each other.

We will continue to review these spreadsheets and make updates with new adaptation suggestions every month. You can always find the most up-to-date versions here on our website, under the ‘Adapting activities’ section. 

New programme plans for virtual and flexible guiding 

We want to support you to run your units in the way that suits you best. That's why we've put together two new suggested programme plans per section, in addition to the plans we released last year. These include:

• A low-resource, two-week plan for delivering virtual guiding sessions using only freely available content from our website. This is a great way to get started with virtual guiding if you haven’t already.
• A six-week plan with suggestions on how to deliver guiding flexibly, in the way that best fits your schedule and circumstances. These use virtual guiding and activity packs so you can continue running your unit and engaging with your girls without needing to meet weekly.

We also have a six-week plan featuring suggestions for both virtual and socially-distanced in-person meetings that we released last year. If you’re looking to resume regular unit meetings, this is a great place to start. You can download all the plans here on our website, under the ‘Programme plans’ section.

We hope that these resources help you with your planning! We will continue to listen to your feedback on what you’d like to see more of, and will make more updates and additions on a regular basis over the coming months. Thank you once again for all your hard work keeping guiding going during this time!