Skip the preaching - Girl Guides just wanna have fun

Every girl needs time for water fights, chocolate tasting and gossip

How very depressing. Girl Guides are to be given lessons on how to survive the credit crunch. Forget about tying knots, judo lessons and making Mother’s Day cards. Girlguiding UK is organising a leaflet for its senior section about money management, including tips on avoiding the debt trap, getting work experience and shredding documents. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m all for young women learning about money. But is the Guides the right place for it?

Having been involved with a Brownie and Guide pack for two years as a volunteer leader (in other words, walking around a mushroom as a Brown Owl), I can say that teenage girls don’t regularly turn up at Guides hoping to brush up on their grasp of store cards. Neither do they wish to be instructed on world affairs, neo-feminist policy or university selection.

The main purpose of the organisation, founded a century ago by Robert Baden-Powell, still holds. On a variety of age levels, Guides provides an enjoyable evening in a safe, relaxed environment which, thanks to its women-only tradition, is not necessarily about winning competitions, shoving one another out of the way or eyelash-batting at the boys. It’s more about eating biscuits and making friends. And at £1 an evening it’s cheaper than a packet of HobNobs, so anyone can join in.

In my experience, Guides – at least, the 2nd South Islington pack – enjoy gossiping, texting and comparing their Ugg boots. Last year our lot made papier-mâché vases (with varying degrees of sogginess), got up on stage and sang, did a bit of tae kwon do and won several badges.

No, none for managing the APR on a Visa card. They were for caring for animals (my pet dog, conveniently) and the history of chocolate from Montezuma to Bournville (via quite a lot of “tasting tests”). It’s slightly more organised than a youth club and slightly less organised than school, has dropped the insistence on Christianity and is multi-faith, without the pressure of having to be coed.

Yes, a Guide pack might be a handy group for the Financial Services Authority to instruct, but that’s not the point. “Learning about the credit crunch is fine,” says Ranger Jackie Johnson, 17, from a neighbouring London pack, “but we are getting that at school. We get lectures on student loans when we are still in year 11.”

Jackie, whose guiding career has included raising £1,000 to go camping in Peru (where she built a wall and redecorated a school), is clear about what she gains from the movement: “Guides is about having friends and having fun. It’s not about sitting down and being lectured at. Discussing money matters, perhaps in terms of planning what to buy on a camping trip, is fine – but not as a serious topic.” Indeed, her treasured guiding moments would probably thrill Baden-Powell to the ends of his plus-fours: “My favourite times include the moment when I once bivouacked in a thunderstorm. And then burnt the breakfast. Or maybe the time in Windsor Great Park when we were all camping during a heatwave and ended up in a giant water fight.” How many were there? “Oh, about 1,000. Lots of overseas packs, you see.” Water is clearly a great leveller: “Basically, if you couldn’t find a friend to soak, you would just jump out from behind a building and soak someone else.”

And for all the sophistication of the Heat generation, there’s no escaping the fact that the old Baden-Powell formula seems remarkably resilient. Girl guiding is still the country’s largest female movement, involving more than half a million girls and women. Some 125,000 girls aged 10-14 go to a Guide meeting every week in this country; there are 20,000 Rangers (14-25) and 250,000 Brownies (7-10), not to mention 80,000 Rainbows (5-7) and the 100,000 volunteers who help to run the packs. There’s no sign of lassitude, either; 48,000 are on the waiting list to join.

Jackie Johnson’s mother Mary, involved with Brownie and Guide packs for more than 30 years, concurs: “Given that education has become so target and exam-driven, Guides is the only way some young women can get into doing other things. It is not an offshoot of school – it’s about extending your own self. Even if you put an effort into stamp collecting, it’s acceptable.”

In Mary Johnson’s view, the crucial point about guiding is that its members enjoy a level of self-determination: “Girls choose what they want to do. So if they want to sit and chat with their friends, that should be fine. The adults need to provide a safe environment. I don’t think financial skills is something I would want in my programme.”

Denise King, chief executive of Girlguiding UK, says this latest development does not mean abandoning the water fights: “The financial guide is more a commonsense prompt, if you like. Girls in our senior division said good money skills were the single most important thing to focus on in preparation for independent living. Having fun together is the methodology.”

Ging gang gooly gooly wotcha!