Personal Values – Phase 3

Phase 3 of an octant is a long-term commitment and should take at least 30 hours, can include gaining a qualification or teaching something to others. I used my phase 3 as an opportunity to gain a new skill and share it with hundreds of young members…

Phase 3: Peer Education

I decided to apply for a Peer Education training weekend as I wanted to progress my skills as a leader, and also take on a specialist subject that I could share with other groups. I attended training from 10^th-12^th October 2014 at Heron’s Lodge in Milton Keynes. The weekend focused on teaching us how to run a project called ‘Free Being Me’ with Brownies and Guides.

Over the weekend we covered at least 14 hours of training. We experienced the Guide session of ‘Free Being Me’, looked at communication, safeguarding, and marketing, and then ran the Brownie session in small groups. We learnt through observing, discussions and role plays.

The weekend covered ‘Free Being Me’ – a programme helping girls to feel more body confident. The issue has become something I really care about. I have since become more aware of articles discussing the topic and hope to integrate this into the sessions.

Following the weekend I spent time revising the programme so I could confidently run the sessions. I also applied for a grant to purchase my Peer Educator t-shirt, some flipchart paper, markers and post-its to help run my first sessions. Straight away I had a list of unit leaders to contact and book meetings with. I set up a spreadsheet to show who I had contacted, when I was visiting them, whether they were Brownies or Guides and that they had confirmed the session. Between January and May 2015 I was set to run a session every week.

I ran my first session on Thursday 15^th January with my own Brownie unit. There were some issues that arose, the perfect princess task didn’t lead into discussion quite right as the Brownies all drew very different looking girls! But they enjoyed the session and one parent said that after this session her daughter put a mirror up in her bedroom and wrote ‘I am beautiful’ beneath it, so I felt this must have been a positive session.

Including my own unit I have completed the sessions with eight units, sixteen sessions, and a mixture of Brownies and Guides. I have become confident in leading discussions and talking to groups of Brownies and Guides I’ve not met before. I enjoy seeing the girls’ perceptions change as they discuss issues with the media and decide for themselves that having fun is more important, and feel proud to be part of the Free Being Me movement.