To You, Girl Scouts

Happy birthday J-Low and Happy Founder’s Day!  This message comes to you thanks to the lovely Ann Robertson who pointed out the History section of GS University via one of her blog posts.  Thanks Ann!  Unfortunately, it looks like the History portion of this website didn’t get very far, and I hope GS University in general isn’t going away because I think it’s a good start to something.  Maybe it can get a new makeover and integrate with whatever mega-system GSUSA is creating right now.

But back to the History section of GS University!  There’s not much on it, but there are a few neat entries like this one featuring a letter from J-Low in an The American Girl magazine issue from 1925 which features a nice surprise at the end. 

To You, Girl Scouts
A birthday message from our Founder, Juliette Low

I am thinking of each of you today, as I send you my birthday message. May the year that lies us all bring us further than ever before toward the realization of our Girl Scout ideals.

Your Editor has suggested that perhaps I might tell you what Girl Scouting means to me. I wish that I might. Yet I find that I cannot put into adequate words all that I feel Girl Scouting has meant to me. And I realize that each year it has changed and grown until I know that a decade from now, even a year from now, what I might say of it would seem like an echo of what has been instead what is.

At our Boston Convention last May, our retiring president, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, said that Girl Scouting can be known only by living. And this is my feeling as I write to each of you, through our magazine.

Mrs. Hoover said that defining a Girl Scout is like putting a flower or a plant into an herbarium. The life, the perfume, the changing color and nodding personality escapes. So, today, instead of trying to tell you what Girl Scouting means to me, I should like each of us to ask herself, “Where is Girl Scouting leading us?”

Sir Robert Baden-Powell answered that question several years ago when we were traveling to my place in Scotland. Sailing along the loveliest part of the Scotch coast, the Isles of Bute, he told me of a word used by the natives in Africa: Ipesi. This, being interpreted, means “Whither.” He said that each letter might stand for one of the principles in Girl Scouting and that these basic principles will never change:

I for Inspiration
P for Possibilities
E for Example
S for Service
I for Ideals

If we can follow the suggestions of Ipesi, we shall know Girl Scouting through living, and we may make it so much a part of our everyday life that people will recognize the Girl Scout spirit and say, “Why, of course she a Girl Scout.”

And so to you, Girl Scouts, come my heartfelt best wishes for the days that lie before us. As you gather in your troops to celebrate our Girl Scout Week in November, think of the girls around the world who are your sister Girl Scouts and Girl Guides.  Truly, ours is a circle of friendships, united by our ideals.