Badges

What badges do we do?

In South Africa, the Guide Programme consists of a series of challenges. In life, one will meet with many challenges and many choices, and through our Guide Programme we endeavour to prepare our girls for life.

The journey begins with the first challenge: The Trefoil Challenge. Before a girl may be enrolled as a Guide, she has to pass this Challenge. It provides the basic knowledge necessary to be a Guide, ie. What Guiding is all about, how it began, how all Guides around the world are linked by the Links of Unity and how the new Guide will fit into the Company. Once a girl has passed, she is enrolled as a Guide in a special ceremony and she then becomes part of the worldwide sisterhood of Guides. She also receives her Guide Trefoil.

The newly enrolled Guide begins the next stage of her journey by discovering more about the world around her. The Discoverer’s Challenge consists of a four areas (flashes) : Community, Home and Yourself, Outdoors and Arts and Crafts. Each area provides suggestions for small challenges (clauses) which the Guide must tackle in order to pass the big challenge and receive the badge. For the Discoverer’s Challenge, the Guide must pass five clauses in each area, it is up to her and her Guider to choose which ones. Once the Guide has passed one clause from each flash, she receives the core of the challenge. After having passed four more clauses from each flash, she has completed the challenge.

Next, the Guide moves on to tackle the Explorer’s Challenge. This Challenge is aimed at older Guides and is harder to complete than the Discoverer’s Challenge. The format is the same, however this time the Guide has to choose 5 clauses from each flash and complete one required clause.

After completion of the Discoverer’s and Explorer’s Challenges, the Guide moves on to the Chief’s Challenge. Before a Guide can begin to work on this challenge, she has to have earned the Service Emblem and four other interest badges. In order to gain the badge, guides have to complete specific challenges. They have to complete 12 hours of community service, have spent a certain number of nights under canvas on Guide camps and they have to organise an event for their guide company. They also have to share what the Promise and Law mean to them and they need to read and discuss parts of Baden Powell’s book “Scouting for Boys” which was the book that began scouting. Girls should also have earned a certain number of interest badges.