Memory box
Happy International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is Balance for Better and the history of an enduring youth movement is proof, if any were required, that uplifting girls and women comes at no cost to boys and men.
The Girl Guide movement is 110 years old this year.
Units throughout New Zealand will have marked the anniversary on World Thinking Day (February 22), which marks both the founding of the youth organisation and the birthdays of Robert, Lord Baden-Powell and his wife Olave.
Boy Scouts had its genesis in August
1907 when British army officer Robert Baden-Powell held a demonstration camp to put into practice his ideas about teaching boys the military scouting skills he had used and witnessed in the South African War.
Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell’s ‘handbook for instruction in good citizenship’, was published in the following year.
The Boy Scouts Association quickly became a national movement in Britain after it was formally established in 1908.
Groups of boys and girls formed troops and when one such female troop attended the inaugural rally in London’s Crystal Palace in September
1909 it was clear that there was a demand for a sister organisation. Although they had not been invited to the rally, that group of confident Edwardian girls sparked a movement that now involves ten million girls in
150 countries. Baden-Powell’s sister Agnes became Chief Guide when the Girl Guides were founded in 1910.
That the movement quickly became an international one can be judged by the fact that the first Boy Scouts camp in New Zealand was held, under the leadership of Major Cossgrove of Tuahiwi, near Kaiapoi in December
1908.
The first troop of Girl Scouts was formed by Cossgrove’s 14-year old daughter Muriel in the same month.
Thereafter a separate girls’ division was established; it was known as the Girl Peace Scouts until 1923 when the New Zealand Girl Guide Association was formed.
Today World Scouting has a presence in 170 countries with a membership of some 50 million.
Girls can join integrated troops in some countries or form their own in others.
Whereas the Boy Scouts of America changed their name only last month to reflect they have just established sexsegregated troops for girls, New Zealand Scouting has had fully integrated female members since the late 1970s.
Once again New Zealand leads the way in striving for gender balance and upholding te mana o te wahine.