Over 300 projects to impact 100 Girls in their local communities were presented at the end of the second phase of the Juliette Low Seminar (JLS)
The Juliette Low Seminar is the flagship leadership event hosted by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), it began in 1932 as a way of promoting international friendship between Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from around the globe.
The JLS now focuses on leadership by giving young women an opportunity to practise leadership using the WAGGGS Leadership Model and encouraging them to develop a project in their community that will empower at least 100 Girls.
In preparation for this online event, over 80 volunteers from all over the world received three months of training on project management, WAGGGS’ Leadership Model, and WAGGGS’ new online platform, Campfire. They received Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training and were upskilled to support participants in their learning and leadership journey.
Diversity, inclusion, and accessibility were essential to making the Seminar a success. The 50 online sessions that the JLS ran were delivered in all four official WAGGGS languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic) with simultaneous interpretation offered by volunteers from the Language Services Team.
The JLS 2022 was a step towards innovation and accessibility by being delivered 100% online. This new delivery method broke down economic, logistic and language barriers to allow participants from 87 different countries to meet online and still get great international experiences.
The Meteor Phase consisted of 10 days of online sessions focused on giving the participants the tools they needed to develop their “100 Girls Projects” and also give them the chance to learn more about WAGGGS’ initiatives, opportunities, and World Centres while making connections with other young women from around the world.
This year’s theme for the JLS was to break down age and gender barriers to leadership and according to participants it did just that. Bertha, a participant from Kenya, summarized her JLS experience by saying: “Girls and young women need to be understood from a worldly view and there’s so much out here to learn for us to impact change and break barriers, the Guiding Movement understands this.”
One of the sessions that stood out the most was called “Meteorites Make Impact” where participant pitched their “100 Girls Projects” to Global WAGGGS Donors and received feedback and encouragement from them. Robinette Emonson, an Olave Baden-Powell Society (OB-PS) member particularly enjoyed this session: “This was such an outstanding opportunity to engage with the young women in a way I had not previously experienced and I thank the WAGGGS staff, particularly the tech team who handled the logistics which included the need for interpreters in all the WAGGGS languages. We really do belong to an amazing Movement and this experience demonstrated the important part OB-PS plays in creating impact.”
Now, the JLS 2022 is moving on to its third and final phase where participants will have six months to deliver their projects and impact at least 100 girls from their communities. WAGGGS has received over 300 project plans that cover a wide variety of subjects related to leadership going from emotional intelligence awareness, financial education workshops to leadership in the deaf community.
For more information on how young people continue to prepare to #Lead4Impact in their own communities, you can take a look at the “100 Girl Projects Map” which shows all of the projects that have been submitted by the JLS 2022 participants.
You can enjoy a glimpse of the JLS 2022 experience through this highlights video: