The New Zealand Guiding Organisation

Guiding people in New Zealand belong to
Guides New Zealand,
Nga kohine whakamahiri o Aotearoa.

The organisational structure of Guides New Zealand is made up of the following parts:

Youth Sections
District
Regions
National

There are four youth sections in the New Zealand Guiding programme:

Pippins - for girls 5 to 7 years of age.
Brownies - for girls 7 to 10 1/2 years of age.
Guides - for girls 9 1/2 to 14 1/2 years of age.
Rangers - for young women 13 or in the first year of secondary (high) school to 18 years of age.
All girl groups are called units.

In addition to the four Guides NZ sections, members are welcomed into the Scout young adults section:

Rovers (Crew) - for young adults 18 to 25 years of age.

Further information about each of the youth sections can be found on the
Section Information Page

A district is a small geographic area and is usually comprised of a mixture of the four youth sections. For example my old district had 6 units, two guide, two brownie, one pippin and one ranger. Each district is looked after by a district co-ordinator, who chairs a district meeting (made up mainly of unit leaders). Youth activities organised each year on a district level included a church parade and usually at least one other activity during the year. These activities include things like district Thinking Day celebrations, beach clean-ups, and camps / indoor holidays. As well as this we are usually well represented at ANZAC Day services.
NB:Although aligned to a district our local Ranger unit is run as a cross-district unit as they take girls in from anywhere within the area. This is a fairly common way of running this section.

A Region is a larger geographic area comprised of a number of districts. There are 6 Regional teams which help nurture different aspects of guiding in the province:

The Regional Co-ordinator's Team is made up of the Regional Co-ordinator, Assistant Regional Co-ordinator, Regional Secretary, Regional Treasurer, and Regional Funding Co-ordinator.
Administration Team is made up of all District Co-ordinators and provides the channel of communication between the province and the members.
Resource Team is made up of regional trainers, instructors, and guiding partners.
Regional Promotion Team which co-ordinates the promotion of Guides NZ, information, recruitment and publicity.
Youth Team which co-ordinates youth events.
Regional Council which provides a forum for other than warranted or appointed leaders and provides support for the province.

NB: There is provision for other positions to be added to the Teams e.g. Lone Co-ordinator, Rural Co-ordinator, Regional Consultants. They are not part of the Regional Executive Team.

Regional Executive is attended by the Regional Co-ordinator, Assistant Regional Co-ordinator, Regional Secretary and Treasurer, Regional Advisors - pippin, brownie, guide, youth, administration, Promotion Team Leaders, Resource Team Leader, Events and International Co-ordinator. The Regional executive is chaired by the Regional Co-ordinator. Essentially Regional executive oversees the province in it's entirety, bringing together information from all areas and sending out information from national office to districts (via the administration team) and vice versa.

National Forum is held every 3yrs - the first was in 1999. All national personnel (advisers, consultants, etc.), Regional Co-ordinators and members of the National Board may attend. Each region may send a number of delegates (including the Regional Co-ordinator, unless she is a board member) according to the membership numbers BUT each region only gets 2 votes. Board Members and National Advisers also get a vote each. Delegates to the National Forum are National Forum members for 3yrs (until the next forum).

Between forum meetings delegates may be required to consider and/or vote on matters which are decided by the National Forum (national appointments, constitutional matters, election of board members, etc.) - this is done by post.

In the years when there isn't a National Forum meeting, there is a National Advisory meeting which is a meeting of all Regional Co-ordinators and National Advisers.

The National Board, which replaces the National Executive, carries out the management of the business on the Association. It is made up of these ex-officio members: National President of Guides New Zealand, National Vice President(s), Executive Director, National Committee Chairpeople (Programme, Leadership, Finance, Administration, Promotion). There are also 3 elected leaders, including one under 30yrs old, who have a specified term. The National Board meet 3 times a year. The Chairperson of the National Board is our National President, Linda Tarbutt.

Adults who are warranted in any position in Guides NZ wear uniform. As well as the basics as listed above there are lots of advisory committees at all levels (eg. PR, Outdoor, Youth etc).

This is a brief overview - I'm not an expert on this organisational side of things - especially as there have been a lot of changes in structure and terminology recently - but I do try to keep the page reasonably up to date :)

Thanks to Cheryl W. for her information about National Forum and some of the other recent changes.

NB:Any NZ Guiding personnel reading this - if you notice a glaring mistake or omission please e-mail me so I can correct / update the page as necessary. I won't be at all offended - I appreciate all the help I can get!

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This page is not in any way an official Guides NZ page but information from
A Guide to Guiding in New Zealand and Te Rama has been used. 