August 21 2022

Two New OFFICIAL Scarves and a Surprise!

Random Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else Kinda Like Me    2 Comments   

A few months, a couple of OFFICIAL scarves were put on sale on the GSUSA online shop which means they’re being retired. You can count on all OFFICIAL scarves being eventually put out to pasture, so if you see one you like, don’t wait to get it (unless it’s $150 and you want to wait it out for the inevitable mark down).  But OFFICIAL scarf retirements mean that new ones will arrive! And arrive they did!  Continue reading

August 16 2022

2022-23 National Programming Summaries

Troop Leader Resources    8 Comments    , , , , , , ,

Addendum 8/6/23: You can find 2023-24’s summaries here.
Example pages

A while back, I wanted to streamline the Badge Explorer (which has a lot of wasted space for printing) and include all of the awards that aren’t featured.  So I put together these summaries of each level, and I update them every year. I’ve made them every year for the past few, and I recently realized I had never published them on my blog!

Updates for 2022-23 include:

  • Retired financial planning badges removed
  • New badges added
  • Global Action & World Thinking Day Awards added
  • Daisy petals updated

Continue reading

August 14 2022

Wherefore Art Thou, Journeys?

National Operations    7 Comments    , , , ,

If you were around between 2008 and 2011 when the new national program called the Girl Scout Leadership Experience (GSLE) rolled out, you’ll know that a new type of content called Journeys was considered the new backbone of it.  Badges, the staple of Girl Scouting throughout its history, took a back seat. Some might even say that Journeys were shoved down everybody’s throat. It took a while, but I think GSUSA reluctantly realized that you can lead a volunteer to a Journey, but you can’t make them do it. So through the years, some changes were quietly made.

All this time, I was under the impression that our national programming was still Journey-driven, but after writing my Tough Cookies Revisited paper, I realized this wasn’t the case. I think it’s OFFICIAL that we’ve moved back to a badge-centric national program. It seems obvious now, but I guess it just didn’t click with me until recently because Journeys were so heavily pushed when I began as a volunteer, and it stuck with me. They’re still required for the higher awards, but there’s not an emphasis on them like there used to be. The following is a rundown of the Journeys’ journey through the years and how they’ve faded into the background. Continue reading