I’m a Girl Scout!

Posted by Cyn

Yep, I’m a 35-​​year-​​old Girl Scout. There are, in fact, four reg­is­tered Girl Scouts in our fam­ily — myself, Katie, Geni and yes, even Sam. Rowan isn’t eli­gi­ble, since they don’t take boys, but obvi­ously, men can be reg­is­tered as adult Scouts. In fact, our troops have always asked that at least one, and prefer­ably both (or more if there are more!) par­ents in a fam­ily reg­is­ter as adult Scouts for var­i­ous reasons.

I’m also one of the lead­ers in the girls’ troop. We have a mul­ti­level (Rain­bow) troop, and I’m work­ing with Juniors and Cadettes. I had one year of Brown­ies and one as a Junior Girl Scout when I was a girl. I didn’t have great expe­ri­ences, and wanted to make things bet­ter for my daugh­ter and other girls, so I’m a leader — and I find that I’m enjoy­ing it every bit as much as the girls do. As just one exam­ple, I had never gone camp­ing until Katie became a Brownie, and thought I’d hate it — but it was really fun.

There are some mar­velous resources on the net for Girls and their par­ents and lead­ers. Katie is going to share her favorite links with other girls, so I’ll con­cen­trate on the adult stuff. Since I’m rel­a­tively new, I don’t have any­thing like the list of links some sites have, but I wanted to share the best of what I have found.

  • The National GSUSA site has far more infor­ma­tion on it than most peo­ple ever real­ize. If you don’t already know what local coun­cil serves your area, you can find out here.
  • We’re in the North­west Geor­gia coun­cil. That site also offers a wealth of infor­ma­tion. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the regularly-​​posted Learn­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties, which is the sched­ule of classes offered for adults and some­times for older girls. Coun­cil events are also posted here. We would have missed out on some mar­velous oppor­tu­ni­ties if we waited for some­one else to tell us about them instead of check­ing the council’s site regularly.
  • The Scout­ing File Cab­i­net is a col­lec­tion of links, songs, cer­e­monies, activ­i­ties, infor­ma­tion for par­ents — you name it!
  • Scout­ing­Web offers an aston­ish­ing range of material.
  • New Moon Mag­a­zine isn’t specif­i­cally for Scouts, but it’s a mar­velous mag­a­zine for and by girls. They’ve started a great mail­ing list, care­about­girls. The list is “for adults who care about girls: par­ents, teach­ers, coaches, coun­selors, pas­tors, troop lead­ers, rel­a­tives, researchers, etc. This is for every adult who wants to help raise healthy, con­fi­dent girls and make the world bet­ter and safer for girls.”

Some­one expressed sur­prise when learn­ing that I’m a Girl Scout leader because she was under the impres­sion that Girl Scout­ing is only for Chris­tians. I wrote an arti­cle to clear up that mis­con­cep­tion, “Is There a Pen­ta­gram Badge?”

Permalink | June 26th, 2012

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