The conference was a great success, with over 80 attendees. During the conference, our keynote speaker, Emily Brailsford, Director at Mothers’ Union, discussed the invaluable work they have dedicated towards fighting domestic abuse. Mothers’ Union is made up of 4 million members across 84 countries, all supporting women, children and families and working to end poverty and injustice. During her talk, Emily Brailsford told us that a domestic abuse call is received every 30 minutes, and a death is reported every 5 days, despite less than 24% of crime being reported to the police. Domestic violence does not have any prejudice and can affect all walks of life, Mothers’ Union’s RISE UP campaign stands for Respond, Inform, Support, Empower, Unite and Pray.
Team Challenge 2025 was launched at the conference, including challenges for age groups 4-8, 8-11 and 10-18. The initiative is a national competition but without the need to travel, it can be a normal GB group’s activity when they meet. The challenge includes physical, puzzle and video challenges. Currently we have sold 298 packs across the age groups, raising a total of £885.
Our CEO, Judith Davey-Cole, gave an update on GB’s progress over the past year. Touching on plans for 2025, she announced the launch of new safeguarding resources. We were pleased to hear that 2024 was a positive year for GB, with a 10% increase of girls and over 500 under 10s joining us! A new group opened in Sidcup, and we are working with the Methodist Church to try and locate uniformed youth groups at every Methodist Church. She also reported 19 attendees at Esther Generation, and discussed our patron talking to city institute representatives at Mansion House about GB and our work. Judith finished her talk with a huge thanks to all GB leaders for all they do up and down the country.
We also announced our exciting new programme resources, focusing on running sessions online based on topics such as the ‘Safe Night Out’, ‘AI, Social Media and Staying Safe Online’, ‘Making Sustainable Choices’ and ‘Managing Money’ (which is still under development) specifically targeted towards 14-18 year olds. These topics were chosen following requests from young women and leaders in GB. The launch of our new gender guidance and updated Life to the Full resources was announced at the event. We were driven to update our Life to the Full resources following issues where it had not been as robust as possible. Policies such as data protection have been significantly revised, whilst new policies such as Gender, EDI and Whistleblowing have been added. For ease of use, all forms are now hyperlinked and new guidance is available via the GB website immediately, AI is also going to be enabled to assist in finding information within documents. A demonstration of use will be recorded and shared. We have ensured that all sections of the resource have a theological outlook.
The 2024 Fundraising Challenge ran from 16 September to 13 October. At the conference, the winners were announced and we were so proud to report that the total raised was £35,000, with an additional £10,000 from Big Give. Over 70 Girls’ Brigade groups took part in the challenge, raising money at bake sales, sponsored events, games evenings and much more! £10,000 of this has been ringfenced to refresh materials and badgework.
The talks were followed by a variety of training sessions that covered residential events, skills boost for your n:spire members, and gender guidance. Our new resources on gender guidance were introduced and explored by Rev’d Andy Fitchett, Co-Director of Affirm: Baptists Together for LGBTQ+ Inclusion. He placed emphasis on ensuring that everyone is included, valued and safe.
The conference was closed with worship led by students from Cliff College. Thank you to all those who attended and made the day possible, we look forward to seeing you at our next conference in July.
