Record keeping for Rangers

Girlguiding has an online system that if I were in my day job mode I could explain to you forever and a day why it stinks, but in my evening role as volunteer I simply say we keep records in this system.  And that has been the case with all the information about member details for a few years now.  Until recently all records about what badges girls had achieved were kept on paper. Now it will also be kept online and that is great for a holistic view and historical records but as I've said before, for the Rangers themselves and for me in the meeting place that system is of little use.

The Rangers will be offered record books to ignore or diligently lose.  Their choice as far as I am concerned.











But I will continue to keep my trusty blue book with both old and new programme records for a while until Look Wider ages out.

And to add to the storage joy I have now also gained an extra 6 folders to store.












My trusty blue book contains the Look Wider programme that has been read over and over by me and the Rangers when trying to decide whether something 'counted' towards their Look Wider badges.

It now also contains the New Programme notes which I know we will be rereading to clarify things for a while.

The detail about the change over period that covers off questions about things like uniform, age range changes etc  So I can give the girls the facts each time not just what I manage to remember.

A one page recording sheet for each Ranger that will start the New Programme.

A one page record for each of the girls that will be sat in the change over rules.

The Look Wider record for the girls that will finish off on Look Wider before it (and they) retires.

That trusty blue book will be our unit bible and I will transfer everything that gets written onto it into the online recording system.

The six new folders contain all the programme resources relating to each of our new themes.

So in each folder there is a UMA section with all the activity cards relating to that theme.









A Skills Builder section with all the skills builder cards relating to that theme (levels 5 & 6 for both sections in the theme)








And a print out of the 3 interest badges for the theme for the girls to get an idea of what they involve too.  (Deciding to hold prints of these is a bit of a gamble as they will date and the girls will have to check online when they do the badge to make sure they are working from an up to date syllabus)

So my plan is that the girls will be able to look at everything in an organised way but when they plan they will need to choose UMAs and Skills Builders from different folders so we have a good mix for our meeting nights.  Once they've chosen I will move the ones we are going to do to yet another folder so we know what we are doing and once they are done they will be returned to the organised filing folders.

At least it is the plan, I'll let you know if it works.

So just to recap:  I AM A VOLUNTEER. I do this for free in my own limited time and yet the level of control and admin that is now being  given to us is huge and clearly time consuming.  I believe the ivory tower guider's long term plan is this is all going to make my life easier.  Again, I'll let you know if it works. But currently my jury is definitely out!