Hello and welcome to The Hive! In the past, you might have read Aqua News, the quarterly newsletter written for members of The Senior Section in the London and South East Region (LaSER). With The Senior Section being split into Rangers and a new offering for 18-30 members, LaSER wanted to change up the communication they have with members in those age groups to reflect the new dynamic. They put together a group of Queen’s Guides who began to research what members wanted to hear and how they wanted to hear it.
We’ve spent the summer creating a space for those aged 14+ in the LaSER region to connect with each other - to share what they’ve been doing, discuss what they’re passionate about and to find out about the great opportunities open to us as members of Girlguiding. We want it to be more than just a newsletter. We want to hear your thoughts on subjects within guiding and subjects impacting women around the world, whether that’s period poverty, STEM, international trips or even your favourite badge. Whatever the discussion is, we want this space to always be active, and with that in mind, we named it The Hive. Hives are a constant source of activity, ever-growing and ever-changing. We want you to influence what we talk about and the content we create.
So, how will it work?
Firstly, The Hive is social. In our surveys, we found that Facebook and Instagram came out on top for preferred methods of communication. Therefore, we’ve created two Facebook pages, one for 14-18 year old members called The Hive Rangers, and another for 18+ members called The Hive. By splitting the age groups we can craft the content and discussions on those pages to reflect what members of different ages want to talk about. We’ve also created an Instagram called TheHiveLaSER, which we’ll use to share our content. We plan to have regular blogs published on the LaSER website, which will be shared across our social channels. If you want to be the first to read news, updates, reports or just plain fun content from us, liking our social channels is the best way to do so. We’ll also be having photo themes, discussion threads and other fun and engaging things going on in our channels, so go check them out! Not into social media? We’ll have monthly email roundups of the blogs we publish. Just join our mailing list and get ready for some great content!
Secondly, The Hive is crowdsourced. We want you to be our content creators. We’ve written a few pieces to start us off, but we don’t want the same voices reporting for The Hive all the time. We want our content to be creative and dynamic, to highlight and showcase things other members might never have thought of. Got something to share or something you want to say? We want to hear from you. We want to hear about your trips, your activities and whether you nailed it or failed it – after all, sometimes the 'failed it’s' create the best memories. We want to hear what you’re passionate about, whether that’s campaigning, sports, trips, art, reading or even competitive ironing. It’s real – look it up!
If this sounds like something you’re interested in, tell us your idea using this online form, selecting The Hive category. We’ll read through everything you send us, and if we like your idea we'll be in touch about turning your idea into a great blog or vlog to feature on the LaSER website and be promoted through The Hive. Don’t worry if you can’t think of anything right now, we’ll shout about the kind of content we’re looking for! But if you’ve got a great idea, don’t hesitate to send it in.
If getting your content published online and read by a multitude of people hasn’t convinced you to get creative, let us show you what else we’ve created. If you submit content for The Hive and it gets published on the website, you’ll receive a special badge as our way of saying thank you. Now, while the badge looks awesome, you might be wondering why there’s a red honeycomb with a number 1 in it. Well, if The Hive is successful and enough people want to create content for us, we’re hoping to produce tiered badges similar to the Nights Away badges. If it goes ahead, you’ll get a badge for the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th, 15th 20th and finally the 25th piece of your content that gets published. Put together, the badges will form their own hive surrounding the Queen Bee in the middle. Not only will it be something to be really proud of, but it’s going to look AMAZING on your camp blanket!
