Guides Uniform | Girlguiding
Guides or Girl Scouts is a movement in Scouting originally and still largely, for girls.
It evolved in the Scouting movement in the early years of the 20th century.
Girls were attracted to Scouting from its inception in 1907. In different places around the world, the movement developed in diverse ways. In some places, girls attempted to join Scouting organisations and it was decided that single-gender organisations were a better solution In other places, girls groups were started, some of them later to open up to boys or merge with boys’ organisations. In other instances, mixed groups were formed, sometimes to later split. In the same way, the name Girl Guide or Girl Scout has been used by groups at different times and in different places, with some groups changing from one to another. In 1909 Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, decided that girls should not be in the same organisation as the boys, and the Girl Guides were founded in the UK in 1910. Many, though by no means all, Girl Guide and Girl Scout groups across the globe trace their roots to this point.
Agnes Baden-Powell was in charge of Girl Guiding in the UK in its early years. Other influential people were Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, Olga Drahonowska-MaÅ‚kowska in Poland, and Antoinette Butte in France. The name Guide was taken from a famous frontier regiment in the British Indian Army, the Corps of Guides, which was noted for its skills in tracking and survival. There has been much discussion about how similar Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting should be to boys’ Scouting programs. While many girls saw what the boys were doing and wanted to do it too, girls’ organizations have sought to avoid simply copying or mimicking the boys. Julie Bentley, appointed chief executive of the United Kingdom Girl Guides in 2012 and head of the Family Planning Association since 2007, described the Girl Guides in an interview with The Times as “the ultimate feminist organisation.”Even when most Scout organisations became coeducational, Guiding remained separate in most countries to provide a female-centered programme. Internationally it is governed by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts with member organisations in 145 countries.
