With over 8.8 million members across 1522 countries and 194 organizations, WAGGGS has a colossal task — continue reading
In today’s digitally connected world, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) has leveraged the power of online communities to nurture young women’s growth and development. At the forefront of this initiative is Manuela Capraro, Interim Head of Missions at WAGGGS, who has played a critical role in overseeing the creation and operation of Campfire—an innovative online learning and community platform. At the Open Social Summit ’23 WAGGGS shared their lessons learned from their Campfire platform.
With over 8.8 million members across 1522 countries and 194 organizations, WAGGGS has a colossal task of managing diverse interests and needs. Here, the Campfire platform comes into play, providing a space for member organizations to connect, share best practices, strengthen each other’s capacity, and learn from one another. Campfire also allows WAGGGS’ volunteers to partake in non-formal education, leadership development and other subject-focused education with the aim of empowering young girls and women.
WAGGGS’ challenges and how Campfire addresses them
As the organization is focused on the growth and development of girls and women, WAGGGS invests heavily in ensuring a safe online environment for their volunteers. Each request for platform access is meticulously checked to prevent potential misuse and maintain the platform’s integrity. However, Campfire is not limited to registered users alone. WAGGGS offers a plethora of resources and learning materials for non-logged-in users, ensuring the reach of their mission to as many young girls as possible.
With a far-reaching scope, an epic mission, and a diverse memberbase from all around the world, managing and creating new, relevant content can be a challenge for any volunteer-led organization. To help with this challenge, WAGGGS uses the Customized Content Access to create custom user roles for volunteers who play an instrumental part in creating and managing content. Their custom-made “Content Creator” role allows for greater scalability within Campfire as volunteers and Member Organizations can easily produce and distribute content for their projects.
Leveraging Open Social Features for Empowering Volunteers
As well as Customized Content Access, WAGGGS makes use of a number of other Open Social features in order to achieve their organizational goals. As education is central to their mission, Campfire has many Courses, which are used to educate users upon registration on how to use the Campfire platform, while also educating volunteers on safety and security and delivering blended learning for WAGGGS global initiatives and events. Courses allow WAGGGS to keep track of volunteers’ progress and can ensure support is given where needed. They also use the Events feature within Open Social in a unique way – To showcase volunteer opportunities, similar to a job board. Instead of “Events”, it becomes a volunteer-sign up, which can be used to assess interest in certain roles or activities. Groups are used within the platform to connect volunteer leaders from around the world to prevent siloed work.
The Campfire platform illustrates the transformative power of digital communities in the nonprofit sector, particularly in how they can foster personal development and create safe spaces for young girls and women worldwide. With its meticulous design, stringent user access controls, and diverse learning materials, WAGGGS’s Campfire stands as a beacon of digital innovation for nonprofit organizations.
For an overview of speakers and topics from the Open Social Summit 2023, see our Insights from the Summit overview here!
