'Our ambitions can change society': Girlguiding’s strategy director on organisation's future vision

Leaders have put tackling the climate crisis at the forefront of their priorities, with a commitment to cut the organisation’s carbon emissions in half by 2040 while introducing eco-guiding activities.

The strategy is part of wider set of ambitions that Girlguiding has drawn up to reduce climate anxieties and increase youth involvement in climate-related and general policy, Berenice Levenez, Girlguiding’s strategy, digital and transformation director, told CYP Now.

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“Our ambition is to protect the planet in all our actions and encourage our girls to participate and drive positive change in society. Given our influence, we can shift individual behaviours and generate collective power to change society,” she said.

Some 84% of Girlguiding’s young members say it’s important to them to do something about climate change, instigating the organisation to spend 15 months building a strategy.

Girlguiding is run by local volunteers, supporting more 300,000 young people across the UK. It allows individual groups to decide how best to implement its overarching strategies.

“Within the next four years, we want to explore how we can deliver guiding in an eco-friendly way. And we want to give agency and decision-making power to units for them to decide the best way to manage their carbon footprint. We see our role as facilitating the spreading of good innovation and ideas,” explained Levenez.

The organisation is in talks with other stakeholders, including environmental strategists, to seek advice by “exchanging best practices” and create an “integrated approach”.

On how success of the strategy will be measured, Levenez said: "We’re going to continuously monitor our performance and outputs such as the number of sessions and badges produced.

"But it’s a bottom-up approach mostly, where we favour local initiative for changing society. The biggest output we can measure will be in 10 years’ time, where we can see if we’ve been instrumental in contributing to policy change and/or the voice of girls being taken into account in policymaking.”

The strategy, and Girlguiding’s manifesto for the next government, has called for “equal access to the outdoors for girls”.

“We know girls don’t always feel safe in outdoor environments. We want equal access to high-quality and safe outdoor spaces which are close to where children live,” added Levenez.

Another key area where the organisation wants the government to take action is in tackling fast fashion – an growing issue which sees companies use unethical practices to quickly create trending clothes. According to Girlguiding, 40% of girls over 10 feel pressured to keep up with fashion trends they see on social media.

“The priority for girls today is fast fashion. We want the government to take immediate action to reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion. Everyone needs to understand where their clothes are coming from and what the impact of this is, actioned by a range of interventions including better education,” said Levenez.

The organisation recently launched its manifesto for the next government at a House of Commons event sponsored by Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP for Batley and Spen.

Calls in the manifesto include appointing a Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, increasing equality in sport, and ensuring every school and college across the UK has period products available throughout the school day, free of charge.

Mental health is another key factor in the manifesto, as the organisation calls for mental health professionals to be placed in every school.

“We see Girlguiding as a preventative group in the mental health sphere, providing a social network to increase confidence. All young people should have access to after school activities and staff meeting their needs to tackle the mental health crisis,” revealed Levenez.

“Overall, we’re campaigning for more opportunities for young people and for youth voice to be heard, which we’ve championed for a long time. There is rising misogyny, and I’m advocating not only for girls in schools, but for the possibility for girls to have space on the boards so that they feel empowered.”

Last year, girl guides in South Cumbria launched the Twinkle for Heather pack to tackle the mental health crisis among young people. The pack was launched in memory of Heather, known as Twinkle when she was a Rainbow leader, who took her own life aged 22 in April 2022.