Camps Aren’t Optional

A little over two years ago, I raised a question to our interim CEO at the time about one of our camps.  I thought maybe I could get an answer since I never got one from our previous leadership. It prompted a meeting, of course.  In it, we had a general conversation about the sale of camps.  Our interim CEO stated in basic terms that people only want to hold onto camps because of their fond memories from the past.

She is wrong. 

Fast forward to today, and the national conversation over camps has bubbled to the surface again due to a few sales that have recently been publicized.  Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson just announced that two more of its camps (among other things) are going to be sold after selling two others a few years ago. Girl Scouts Louisiana East is also in the process of selling one of its camps.  Both councils have stated that money from the sales will be used to fund an “Experience Center!!” In case you’re wondering what an Experience Center is, it’s basically the latest reiteration of “Leadership Centers” which then morphed into “STEM Centers of Excellence” a few years later as the next big and flashy thing.

In 2019, GSUSA established a National Property Plan to help councils “build their capacity to manage and leverage properties and establish a legacy of stewardship for properties to better support and deliver our program to girls.”  To accomplish this, GSUSA partnered with Newmark Knight Frank (NKF), a real estate consultant firm, to help in:

 “…analyzing council data to evaluate properties by region, program, and function and identify target areas where improved properties can increase both property use and membership. The work includes an initial baseline analysis, such as the identification of opportunities to improve facilities, management, and use. Then, based on those findings, the advisory company will make recommendations.”

As a part of this process, NKF maps out local amenities such as state parks and other third party partners – obviously implying that these places can serve as substitutes to Girl Scout camps.  If you’re interested in learning more about the National Property Plan and NKF’s process along with some examples of their presentations, be sure to read the GirlScoutGovernance.com article regarding this topic.

NKF is wrong, just as our interim CEO was two years ago. And if council leadership takes the word of real estate professionals and their glossy brochures over the real world experiences of Girl Scout leaders through the years, then they are making a very, very grave mistake.  I’d like to share my two recent experiences which brought all of this to the forefront for me.

Two weekends ago, our Trailblazer troop visited Congaree National Park for a camping weekend. We had a wonderful time, and we did all sorts of things including an orienteering review, nine miles of hiking, an owl prowl, and dutch oven cooking.  At one point during our campfire and the usual round of s’mores, I happened to notice a light bobbing in the woods near our campsite. The light came closer and closer.  Something didn’t sit right with me, so I grabbed another leader and walked to the edge of the woods.  I said very loudly, “WHO’S THERE?”  The light disappeared, and a few seconds later, it showed up in another area of the woods and moved away from us.  The other leader wasn’t very concerned and said it was probably one of the kids from a set of families who were camping a few sites down from us.  And it probably was, but they always say trust your gut, and I acted on it when I saw the light coming closer and closer to us.

Our Trailblazer troop consists of 8th through 12th graders who are members because they want to participate in more outdoor trips and activities, so taking them camping is a little easier than bringing little ones. But even though the girls are older, I still feel that sense of alertness that’s necessary when you’re in charge of children. And for me at least, it’s much more heightened when I’m somewhere like a public campground.  I feel like we’re more exposed.  I may not be consciously aware of that feeling, but it’s always there on some level.  In fact, when we first get to a campground, I like to take a few minutes to quickly walk around the nearby sites to see who else is there and what they look like so that we know what we’re dealing with.

You never know who is going to be at other campsites.  Are they families with young children running around unsupervised?  Or twenty-somethings that are there to kick back and have a good time, complete with drinking and loud music?  Are there any creepers there that will peer in on us?  Those are the sorts of things we leaders have to think about, as unfortunate as it is.  There are bad people in this world, and it’s up to us to do as much as we can to protect our girls against them. This should be a council priority as well.

Our SUM told me that when she was a leader many years ago, she took her younger troop to a state park to camp for the weekend.  At one point, a couple in the next campsite over started having very loud sex.  Our SUM nonchalantly took her girls elsewhere until the couple finished their business.  She also said that was their first and last time camping at a state park, and they only stuck to Girl Scout camps after that.

Now let’s compare that to my other experience a few weekends prior to our visit to Congaree.  One of my co-leaders in my regular troop and I took our Cadettes up to Camp WaBak for a weekend.  We knocked out both the Think Like an Engineer Journey and a Take Action project.  Looking back, I had a very different mindset when it came to our girls’ protection. I didn’t have to worry about the same things that I do when we’re at a public campground because we’re on a private piece of property that’s overseen by a ranger.  And many times, there are other troops present, so if something happened, I could turn to other nearby leaders if need be.

When leaders who haven’t camped before ask me about where and how to begin, I ALWAYS advise them to start at one of our Girl Scout camps.  They’ve got a built-in safety net that should give leaders, girls, and even parents some peace of mind.  New leaders are in general apprehensive about taking their troops camping. But doing so in a familiar and contained environment where you’re aware that there are additional precautions in place takes at least some of the stress out of the picture.  Girls who might be nervous about staying away from home will feel better about being somewhere where they see other troops and if they’ve visited the camp before for an event.  Parents of younger girls especially feel more comfortable sending their girls overnight to a private Girl Scout camp versus a public campground.

If you’re a leader, please don’t let me scare you away from camping at state and national parks with my comparisons and scenarios.  There’s a lot of fun to be had and much to be learned at those parks, just like we did at Congaree.  I think older girl troops should at some point branch out from Girl Scout camps because that’s one of the later steps when it comes to Outdoor Progression.  If girls plan on continuing their outdoor experience once they get out on their own, they’ll be staying in public areas, so they need the exposure.  I just don’t believe jumping in the deep end is the best thing for newer and younger troops.

And then there’s the programming aspect.

There are four pillars to the Girl Scouting program:  STEM, Life Skills, Entrepreneurship, and the Outdoors. Girl Scout camps are a REQUIREMENT if councils are serious about delivering the Outdoor pillar.  Where’s programming supposed to take place for it?  And it doesn’t even have to be outdoor programming – our Cadettes’ Journey was STEM based, but we wanted to get away and take in some fresh air and fall foliage.  It would have been very hard to run our Journey weekend at a state park campsite due to the facilities and space that we needed.

Are councils planning on renting out increasingly hard to reserve parks?  How can you run outdoor programming in “Experience Centers!!” which are located in urban areas?  Where are service units supposed to hold multi-troop encampments (which also serve as a way to introduce camping to new leaders)?  Are troops really going to travel two or three hours to go to a camp in another part of the council because their local one is now gone?  Hint: no, they’re not.  What do larger troops do about camping if their only options are state parks?  These facilities limit how many people can stay on one site, and it’s usually a pretty small number.  The larger group campsites, if there are any, are hard to come by.  Where can service units easily host summer day camps? Do councils think these things through before deciding to get rid of their camps?  I’m sure NKF doesn’t – no offense to them.  Shallow surveys that councils send out asking girls if they want flush toilets doesn’t cover any of the points I just made.  Board members and CEOs are missing the entire picture if they claim they’re just doing “what girls want” and listen to out-of-town corporate consultants instead of having in-depth discussions with volunteers before making the decision to let camps go.

Unfortunately, I think there will be cases in the future where councils will have to unload property due to financial instability, even if they don’t want to.  I already covered this in an earlier blog post.  But they need to really to think things through when deciding to trade camps for something else, especially if it’s urban based properties and programming.  They are not where Girl Scouting’s success lies.  And if councils see selling camps as a short-term solution to bring in cash, they’ll be shooting themselves in the foot because it WILL affect membership – that’s guaranteed.  The Girl Scout Research Institute publication Girl Scouts Soar in the Outdoors listed this as its #6 key finding:  “The more girls go outdoors with their troops, the happier they are with their Girl Scout experience.”  Retention is pretty important, right?

Instead of seeing camp properties as a drain on operations, councils and GSUSA should see them as investments in membership.  There are no substitutes.  As a response to our interim CEO two years ago after she stated that people only want to hang onto camps due to their personal memories, I asked, “So how are today’s girls supposed to make their own memories without them?”