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Rainbow Guides is the newest and youngest section of Girlguiding UK and is open to all girls aged five or over who may remain with us until after their seventh birthday when they become eligible to join Brownie Guides. Girlguiding UK is the largest voluntary organisation for girls and young women in this country. It has around 600,000 members. There are similar organisations throughout the world and Girlguiding UK is a founding member of the world association that unites them. Membership of Girlguiding UK is voluntary and is open to any girl or woman, regardless of faith, race, culture, nationality or any other circumstance, provided she is able to understand and willing to make the Promise, which for Rainbows is:
"I promise that I will do my best to love my God and to be kind and helpful"
The ideals of this promise are shared with members of WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) all around the world. There are over 10 million of us in 144 Countries!
Rainbows have fun! We take part in indoor and outdoor activities as part of our programme, which is called the Rainbow Jigsaw. Our meetings are full of games and activities that provide challenging opportunities for Rainbows to think for themselves. Each Rainbow takes an active part in making decisions about the activities our unit does. Everything a Rainbow does helps her develop. Being a Rainbow is an opportunity for girls to look, learn, laugh and love. For our meetings Rainbows can choose what they would like to wear from a range of Rainbow items produced by Girlguiding UK including the tabard, which for Rosebery Rainbows is red. All these clothes and many other items are available from the Bournemouth Guide Shop. On joining, each new Rainbow is given a welcome bag and a little book to help her learn her Rainbow Promise.
A typical Rainbow meeting at Rosebery Park follows a theme and starts by singing the Rainbow song. We usually have a Rainbow chat, a story or an activity that gets us thinking about our theme for the afternoon, and then on to the messy stuff! Rainbows just love cutting and sticking or ‘cooking’ and are very creative so we usually make something that we can take home – or eat! We play all sorts of games; the dressing up ones are the favourites, or the noisy ones. We finish our meeting with a prayer and our closing song – a lot to fit in just one hour.
Our Guiders (leaders) are adult volunteers who have completed Girlguiding UK training, including child protection and basic first aid, and there is one adult for every five Rainbows. We also, sometimes have Young Leaders, aged fourteen and over, or older Guides, aged eleven and over, to help at our meetings and we are always eager to welcome more adult helpers provided they are aged 18-65 and are reliable and willing to undergo a CRB check
Here at Rosebery Park we meet in the lower hall for one hour a week during term time and our subscriptions are only £5 every half-term. This covers the cost of craft materials, equipment, books and badges and so on. We are very fortunate at Rosebery in that we have a Parent/Guider Committee, which organises fund raising events that help us pay for annual subscriptions to Girlguiding UK head quarters and extras, like outings and treats.
If you would like to know more
about us email Pauline Grant on
rainbows@roseberypark.org.uk.
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