Chief commissioner’s blog – January 2025

Happy New Year to you all. I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and took time to celebrate with your families, or took a well deserved break.

I am so excited for the year ahead and everything that we have planned for 2025. Not only do we have the Pyjama Party with 21,000 members taking part (yes, an unbelievable 21,000 members!) but we also have Amazing Anglia in July to celebrate our Queen’s Guide recipients. August will see a Brownie Spectacular event at our very own Hautbois Activity Centre which, if it’s half as good as Hautbois Fest, will be truly wonderful! What’s not to be excited about?

The office staff team has recently been restructured. Amanda Bayfield, our Executive Manager, has provided some more information. The new structure will help us as we work towards better communication across the whole region team and ensure that it is easier for us to know who we need to speak to when we need support.

Just before the Christmas holidays, we received communication to say that the national board of trustees approved our new constitution at their meeting in December. Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey last summer. Claire Course and I will be interviewing for prospective grass roots leaders to join the executive committee and Charlotte Bennett has been extremely busy working on the Girlguiding Advocate Panel (GAP) which is members from 16 to 24. They will form the GAP. All counties can have a representative so that our young members’ voices are heard and they will have a say! They will be meeting for the first time early this year with Charlotte and will be choosing their chairperson. The chair will be over 18 and automatically becomes a region trustee. I want to ensure that we keep you all involved in what we do and who the trustees are and I will be sharing information with you about the executive committee and who forms the trustees over the next couple of months.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, we are starting to work on our strategy for the next five years and I want to make sure as many of you have a say as possible. To this end, there will be strategy workshops spread around the region over the coming months so that you can come along and tell us what you would like to happen in Girlguiding Anglia in the next five years.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy finishing off the mince pies; making exciting plans with your units and I hope to meet more members over the year ahead.

Yours in Guiding.

Karen Johnson

Chief commissioner

Girlguiding Anglia