Girlguiding research found 35% of parents/carers say they don’t volunteer because they’ve never been asked…
If you are struggling to find volunteers and support to run your unit consider reaching out to parents/carers (or other family members), as there are different ways they can help.
For more information and top tips, including a template email asking for help – download our poster Getting parents involved
Get to know your parents
If you get to know your parents, you will be able to find out who may be able to help occasionally (or in an emergency). Also, some of your parents may have skills or interesting jobs they could share at a unit meeting.
Parent rota
For some units, this is the only way they can keep going and is a great way of ensuring support to run the unit. Whilst many of your parents won’t be able to help every week, they may be able to do once a month or once a term.
Flexible guiding
There may be parents/carers or even other family members who have skills or the opportunity to help the unit in other ways, e.g. unit admin, accounts or the shopping!
The Girlguiding website has more information about how to involve parents and a list of potential roles where parents can support.
Grown-ups in Guiding
We have a three-week challenge called Grown-ups in Guiding which aims to give parents/carers/friends an insight into how a unit runs, the type of activities our girls do, and potentially encourage them to volunteer themselves.
More information can be found here.
Badges and certificates are available for FREE and can be ordered from the County Office Team by emailing admin@girlguidingleeds.org.uk.
Note: Girlguiding has updated their policy Involving parents | Girlguiding on when you need to register a parent helper in your unit, which doesn’t quite fit with our three week challenge. Please don’t let that stop you using the challenge!
If it works best for them to do all 3 sessions within the same term, then you should cover how you will managing it in your risk assessment – for example, being clear to the girls that the volunteer is a parent helping initially for 3 sessions, and ensuring that the helper has understood our Unit Safeguarding Guidelines Unit safeguarding guidelines | Girlguiding
