How do adults earn badges?

We all remember the joy of earning badges as a Brownie and we all know the disappointment that we’re expected to go through life without being rewarded for doing all the things with a badge.

But adults can earn badges!

As a Girlguiding (or Scouting, I guess) volunteer, you’ll have extra opportunities to pick them up but there are plenty that are open to all.

When your girls do a badge, you get a badge

I figure that if I’m running the badge, I’ve actually done more work than if I’d done it myself. If you’ve facilitated your girls doing a badge, you’ve earned it. I have so many more Brownie badges earned as an adult than I ever did as a Brownie.

Do challenge badges

As well as the official programme badges – interest badges, skills builders and theme awards – there are plenty of challenge badges. Your district, county or region might make one (I’m still finishing a county challenge badge from last May) or you might pick one from the list of badges individual units make to raise funds (that’s a Facebook group, not an official list but it’s by the far the easiest place to find lots of badges quickly and easily). You can do these with your unit but there’s no reason why you can’t do them on your own for the fun of it, to actually do the challenges rather than arrange for your kids to do them.

Unofficial badges

These are open to literally anyone who can find them.

Pawprint Badges do huge ornate embroidered badges on lots of themes – we’ve done a few at Brownies and we’re using one for a virtual sleepover this weekend. They’re not quite so good to do on your own. You have to do one craft, one game, one food and one other plus varying numbers of extras from any category depending on age, and I’m sure you can guess that games in particular don’t tend to work as an adult doing it at home.

I’m a huge fan of the Rebel Badge Club, which has an actual book of Brownie-style interest badges designed for adults. Those ones really are good for doing independently. I’ve finished six and have another six in progress right now, with a further fifteen to do at some point. There are also heavy hints about a second badge book being created but as the first one isn’t yet six months old, it’s not quite time to be excited about volume 2.

I know there’s someone else that does a similar thing, if not quite on the same semi-professional scale, I just can’t think who. I’ve seen them! If you know what I’m talking about, please leave me a comment because I’ve searched everything I can think of and I can’t find them.

I’m collecting the swimming distance badges I didn’t reach as a child, challenging myself to longer distances than I’ve ever done before – they’re quite hard to get hold of if you’re not a registered swimming teacher but I’ve found them at The Swimming Shop.

ErisApple do some lockdown club badges you can treat as challenges if you want to, and plenty of badges that are just for fun.

I’ve been to Pax Lodge a few times – they have a special badge for the Pax Lodge Challenge and they have two badges that cover their various Challenges Around London, which are self-guided challenge packs that involve exploring London. There’s a Harry Potter one and a general one. Our Chalet also has a special Our Chalet Challenge, although I don’t know of any other challenges and I daresay the other World Centres have their own Challenge badges too. And of course, they all have souvenir badges just for visiting. The Scouting equivalent probably have the same. The only Scout centre I’ve ever investigated is the one at Kandersteg and they have loads of centre-specific challenge badges.

Events

Some events do badges. If you go to one of Girlguiding flagship events at one of the TACs, there tends to be a badge included in the information pack. If not, there’s almost definitely one you can buy somewhere around. WAGGGS did a Share the Light badge in 2020 for a huge international virtual campfire and another for attending virtual events. WAGGGS and Girlguiding both do official annual Thinking Day badges, so you can collect them or you can “earn” them by doing Thinking Day activities with your unit. Most regions have Nights Away badges (SWE are the prettiest!) to commemorate residentials. I go on region walking weekends – there’s a nice big badge for your first and then you collect mini footprint badges for subsequent ones, so you get ongoing badges but they don’t entirely take over your blanket.

The TACs have badges for different activities – I have half a dozen (kayaking, abseiling, zipwire, archery & tree climb) from Foxlease and one (climbing), so far, from Blackland Farm. I plan to go to Waddow at some point and collect a few of theirs – what I especially love is that they’re all the same style but they each have their own signature colour and shape. Foxlease’s are teal rectangles, Blackland’s are green circles and I believe Waddow’s are purple hexagons.

Souvenir badges

Anywhere you go that’s got a Guiding or Scouting collection will have a badge you can buy, and so will plenty of other places. Cathedrals, national trust places, tourist attractions. I like to buy a flag badge from new countries. A word of warning: non-Guiding ones will often have an iron-on back. I don’t like ironing badges on because the glue always starts to peel off after a little while. But that plastic coating also makes it an absolute pig to push a needle through if you want to sew it on securely.

Swaps

Sometimes you’ll go to an event or a place and badge swaps will be a thing. Sometimes it’ll be literal: I went to Pax Lodge for Thinking Day in 2017 and took badges which I handed out to the people I was sharing a room with, who did likewise. Sometimes there will be a box – you leave a badge and take a badge. Those are fun – you end up with totally random badges in your collection that are actually a souvenir for something apparently unrelated. Or it might be some other small thing – a small craft with a pin to wear, a little gift. At TAC events, you’ll often find boxes left in the leaders’ lounge with fundraising badges in – leave £1 or whatever’s requested, help yourself to a badge and know that you’ve helped build a new hut or send a unit on an international adventure or whatever. I came back from Wellies & Wristbands in 2015 with five of those, plus my official event badge and an activity badge.

So if you’re an adult who wants to collect badges, there are so many ways and means of doing that, so get started!