Group leader Edith Falkenberg (upper left with glasses) leads her Centretown Girl Guides group through its paces.
As the Girl Guides of Canada celebrate their 100th anniversary this year, membership in the organization has increased for the first time in more than a decade.
The Girl Guides have more than 90,000 members in Canada. National membership is up by about 1,000 this year – the first time membership is higher than a preceding year since the mid-1990s.
Ontario has seen the biggest spike. Last year, the Ontario Girl Guides had 37,565 members. This year, they have 39,000 – a 3.8-per-cent increase in girls and adult volunteers, and a 4.4-per-cent increase in girls.
Marnie Cumming, Ontario’s commissioner for the Girl Guides, attributes the rise in membership to better marketing and recruitment at the community level.
“I think we’re beginning to reap the benefits of the hard work that has been going on over the last few years,” says Cumming.
Girl Guides membership in Centretown has also risen.
When guide leader Edith Falkenberg took over the Centretown guiding unit three years ago, there were only two members. Within two months of recruiting, they were up to 10 members. This year, there are 16 Girl Guides – aged 9 to 11 – in the Centretown unit.
“The word is getting out there in the community that we’re doing some fun programming,” Falkenberg says. “It’s not just very rigid and by the book or militant or anything like that. We have fun.”
The Centretown Sparks, ages 5 to 6, and Brownies, ages 7 to 8, combined unit has 30 members this year. Seven years ago they only had 10 members, says unit leader Joan Coulter, who has been a member of the Girl Guides in Centretown since 1981.
“We just finally hit a critical mass of girls who are enthused and they’re telling their friends and they’re bringing more in,” she says.
Despite these successes, the Girl Guides still have trouble getting members from minority groups – something the organization has struggled with for years. This is also true in Centretown.
They get some members from minority groups, but not as many as they would like, Coulter says.
“To be honest, I’m not sure I can claim that we’re doing much better than we were 10 or 15 years ago,” she says. “It’s an ongoing challenge.”
Immigrant parents, who did not have Girl Guides in their countries of origin, may be inclined to register their daughters in other activities, says Coulter. “There are so many options out there for girls.”
But, Coulter says the organization’s marketing and website have improved, and she hopes this will add exposure and attract more members.
This year, the Girl Guides of Canada changed the “promise” that the girls recite at every meeting. They changed “true to myself, God and Canada” to “true to myself, my beliefs and Canada,” to make the pledge more inclusive and less explicitly religious, says Cumming.
The uniform has also changed. Girls once had to wear dresses. Now, they can wear pants and a t-shirt.
“It’s a lot easier to run in pants than in a dress,” Falkenberg explains.
The organization has also tried to stay relevant by focusing on current issues, such as the environment, says Falkenberg.
One of the most important things about the Girl Guides is that it is an all-female group, says Cumming.
The Scouts now admit girls, but Girl Guides say that it’s nice to have a place to go where there are only girls.
“We get to have fun with girls so that boys aren’t interrupting, and saying, ‘Oh I’m strong and everything,’” says Tanya Coulter, 11, and a guide in Falkenberg’s unit. “It’s spending time with girls.”