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A Bold New Dawn (April Fool)

Apr 1, 2009 by     14 Comments    Posted under: Span That World

Its a historic day both for the UK Girls Guides movement and Woodcraft Folk.

At North West Thing in Hebden Bridge DF Committee voted to go ahead with Woodcraft Folk General Council’s decision to set in motion the processes that will eventually mean a full merging of The Girl Guides Movement with Woodcraft Folk.

The decision has come partly as a result of of both registered charities losing money in the grim financial times although a spokesperson for The Guides was keen to point out.

“This is not a sudden decision. We have been thinking about this for a long time”

Woodcraft Folk’s General Secretary Kirsty Palmer, who once worked for the Guides Association described the impending merger as:

“A bold new dawn for Woodcraft”

Now that DF Committee has given its full support to the merge we should start to see changes in districts and the way group nights are run with the introduction of WCF’s first single sex elfin and pioneer groups in certain districts within the year. The full merge is scheduled to be complete by summer 2011 in time for the International Camp.

These are exciting times – have your say and voice your support in the comments box bellow

Blue Skies

DF Committee

  • Will K

    Glad to see this bold & positive move is finally happening. As Fundraiser this opens up a wealth of new opportunities for funding!

    Keep up the good work!
    Willx

  • Alex – London DF

    I am angry & shocked by this announcement, how can this be? Isn’t Woodcraft & DFs especially supposed to be about integration of different sexes, classes & races? Why were we not further consulted on this? This is a HUGE decision to have been made by a small bunch of obviously small minded people.

    Disgruntled DF,
    Alex

  • Clare, Venturer Leader

    I wish to express my solidarity with Alex and join him in condemning the actions of the DF Committee and the General Council.

    I try to teach my Ventuers about the importance of listening to everybody’s point of view and yet here are our elected leaders disregarding everything i though Woodcraft Folk stood for.

    I am outraged and dissapointed.

    Clare Whitticker

  • phin

    In Defence of DF Committee and General Council, both of which i am a member i must point out the flaws in your argument.

    In democracy leaders are elected to make decision on behalf of the electorate – that is simply all we have done. Were General Council to hold a referendum every time there was a decision to be made nothing would ever get done.

    Also North West Thing and General Council meetings are open meetings with the agenda’s published before hand on woodcraft.org and spanthatworld.com – if you really felt strongly you were more than welcome to come and express your opinions in those forums.

    Phin Harper
    General Council Member
    DF Committee Laymember

  • Magico Martinez

    Hopefully just a decision that will last a day??

  • Conor

    As Affiliations Rep for DF Committee, I think that it is essential to the development of our Movement that we integrate with fellow youth movements. Especially when they are as progressive as the UK Girl Guides. They have plenty of ideas to offer: for example I think that we should consider getting DF uniforms.

  • Liam

    Finally! I’ve been campaigning for this for years. I’m so glad WCF has seen sense in the end.

  • Laurie

    I know! We would look like such fools if we hadn’t gone through with this like in this month as well.

  • Ilya

    I have good friends who are young girl guide leaders, and we have a lot of common ground, this could be a positive step…
    At the same time the news of single sex groups has left a very bad taste in my mouth.
    What will follow? as the smaller organisation I get the feeling we (the folk) will have to give up a lot of ground.

    Intrigued as to what this ‘merge’ actually means.

    You said about the agendas, but this seems like a Massive move, somnething which should maybe have been made more apparent… Then again, I’ve been a bit swamped by college lately and mayn’t have noticed.

  • rosie

    this isn’t a merge – it’s more of a takeover. I’ve just looked on the guides website and there’s no mention of this. Guides is a much larger, more organised and better publicised movement than woodcraft, and if we’re not careful we’re just going to get absorbed into it. We shouldn’t put money before our basic principles

  • Kate

    I still can’t quite believe it… This makes me very sad…

  • becca

    i love you all. fact

  • Jonny

    i smiled :)

    can’t decide if some of the comments are sarcastic (is that the right word?) or not…

  • Ilya

    April fools’ prank eh? It was long past the first of April when I saw this!

    What smart Alec came up with this?

    You silly, mean, wonderful people! Got me on a right rant…

    luvs
    x

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