Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts and Girl Guides! Part 2

99 years ago today, the first meeting of the Girl Guides, soon after to be re-named the Girl Scouts, met in Juliette Gordon Low's home in Savannah, Georgia. Mrs. Low was a friend of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, founders of the Boy Scouts. It occurred to Daisy (her camp name, a tradition that continues to this day) that girls also could use emergency preparedness studies, outdoor skills, and the opportunity to give service back to their communities. Two days prior to this meeting, she called her cousin with this wild idea. A group of 18 girls met that day, forming two patrols~~the Carnation and the White Rose patrols. The idea spread quickly, and ever since that day, girls have been having marvelous experiences as Scouts.

I started in Girl Scouts when I was in second grade in 1962, at Clay Elementary School, in Oregon, Ohio. From the time I put on my first Brownie Beanie, I was hooked. I still cherish my first Brownie pin. From there, our family moved to West Toledo, where I became a Junior Girl Scout, at DeVeaux Elementary School. My Mom was an assistant leader, and very quickly became a leader and neighborhood chairman. It suited her perfectly. We found ways for everything we did as a family or in school to become Scout stuff--way more fun than calling it homework. After 2 years in Toledo, we moved to Perrysburg, where I joined a new and great Junior Troop, and then moved up to Cadettes. How I loved the grown-up look of the Cadette uniform--sleek A-line skirt, crisp white blouse with 'stewardess' cross-tie and a new cockade for my hat. My troop, which was down to about 4 of us, fell apart when we started High School, as do most GS troops. Which brings me to this:

The Girl Scouts have changed. Some for the better, put most of the changes have been to save/make money. Plain and simple. The Scout organization I knew was about service and skill development. The organization today is just for career exploration. A few skills are picked up along the way, but only as they relate to a future paid-job-related employment. Service is a part of Scouts still, but not nearly to the extent it was. And this from a woman who has always known she'd have a career outside of the home. And who loves her chosen career. Passionately.

I hate to be the person who says, "Back when I was a kid, we didn't need video games, we had marbles to play with." True that. I try to keep up with the latest techie stuff, not because I need it, but simply because it's coming~~it's here. I don't want to be left behind just because I didn't have/need something when I was a kid. I get it: Things change.

But there are some basic tenets to which we need to hold. Service above self (thank you, Rotarians for saying it so simply) is one of them. The other is being able to care for yourself and others. Yes, having a career is indeed critical. But there are kinder, gentler ways of getting there than the new GS Program. It lacks continuity, creativity, and fun. It looks good on paper, because the "Journeys" say go be creative and have fun, but it just isn't for most troops and girls. And (and here's the biggie) it's not fun for leaders.

Without fail, if you ask a GS leader now what she thinks about the Journeys program, she'll say, well, it was nice, but the girls got bored with it. They want more variety, short term projects, better 'rewards.' In short, they want to earn badges, which cover particular skills, not a long, drawn out things about what they can/should be as adults.

And now I'm going to say something out loud which I thought I'd never hear me say:

Girl Scouts need to adopt a new membership model much more like the Boy Scouts or 4-H.

You have no idea how hard that was for me. Whew, I'm exhausted just putting that on paper, er plasma, er whatever. So exhausted that I'll have to lay out my idea in a later post. Not to mention that the laundry still isn't doing itself, so I have to.

It's a skill, you know.