(Recruiting More) Leaders of Aruba

Aruba has so many amazing volunteers working to support the work of the APG, and during our three weeks here we want to introduce you to some of them. So we will be taking portraits of some of the inspiring leaders we meet and telling you their stories. First up we have:

Angela, 18. Angela met us at the airport when we first arrived, helped to orientate us to the island and then participated in both days of our training for leaders this weekend. She has been involved in the APG for 13 years and is now a confident young woman preparing to vote in the elections for the first time. She now uses the skills she learnt as a Padvindster in her role as a Pioneer and leader with younger girls.

In order for APG to grow and for more girls to benefit from what guiding and scouting can offer, the organisation are looking to recruit more volunteers. We explored some of the ways we might do this in our second day of leader training and here we’ve created a list five of the ways we use in the UK that we talked about with links to useful resources.

1. Flyers, posters and postcards. In the training we talked about the value of talking to people face to face about guiding, but then being able to give them a business card or a flyer so they could get in touch again and find out more. In the UK, our guiding shop make posters, flyers and postcards that can be ordered for the cost of postage so that local units can use them to recruit more girls and adults. A selection of these can be viewed here
2. Presence at events. Having a presence at events is a great way to be seen. In the training we talked about national days and annual holidays like Mothers’ Day when APG members wear their smart uniforms and are visible in the community.
3. Social media and videos. We also discussed how we can use video in particular (through social media) to enable more people to see what guiding is all about. We showed two videos from Girlguiding UK (this one and this one) as inspiration, and Angela made this awesome one of our training session.
4. Involving students. Rachel talked about how her county in the UK work with the local university to encourage students to volunteer and Girlguiding UK have published this advice. Leaders were keen on this idea and thought it might also work well at the university in Aruba. 
5. Building a website. We find, in the UK, that its really useful to have a website where you can keep information about who to contact about joining guiding, what it’s all about and upcoming events. There’s some easy to use free hosts on the internet like this blogger site that our blog is hosted on, or www.weebly.com have some free packages.

Do you have any top tips on recruitment? What’s worked for you? Add them in the comments on here, Facebook or tweet us!