My Adventure with the Adventurers!

If you’ve followed me for a couple of years, you’ll know about my journey with getting a Trailblazer troop/program underway. To give you a brief recount of this story, in the summer of 2019, GSUSA relaunched the Trailblazer and Mariner programs to much fanfare among those of us who were hoping our national organization would invest more in the outdoors. A guidebook and a Trailblazer membership pin were released at the time, but since then, there’s been no further acknowledgement from GSUSA about the program. With all of the turnover and turmoil that’s happened at GSUSA since 2019, I have to wonder if the folks up in NYC even realize that it’s still out there? But really, it doesn’t matter, because volunteers took the idea and ran with it – and I’m one of those folks.

In 2020, I decided to start a council-wide Trailblazer troop that could serve as an add-on to girls in existing troops or for Juliettes (independent Girl Scouts), and so I recruited some volunteers from around the council as co-leaders. We launched in the fall of 2020, and it was a rousing success. We had waiting lists for our events. However, that was to be expected since covid policies had canceled school sports and band competitions, so there was nothing else going on. The next year, we still had good attendance at our events, but the numbers weren’t quite as large. By the third year, we were pretty much dead in the water. We had a hard time getting the word out to the council membership, and it seemed like other volunteers didn’t really understand our troop structure. Two other Trailblazer troops that had formed during this time didn’t make it, either. So I wondered if the troop model was really the way to go in our council, but I didn’t want to give up. Meanwhile, I learned about a group in the Virginia Skyline council called Adventurers who use a different model to deliver outdoor event programming. In addition to high adventure, they also schedule a variety of activities that are more low-key such as hikes that incorporate painting using watercolors. They partner with their council who advertises their all-volunteer organized and led events. Skyline is similar in size to my council (SC – Mountains to Midlands), so we believed that perhaps this was our pathway. We met with our council’s staff and pitched the idea of partnering on a volunteer-led Trailblazer program to them. They agreed, so this past year, we dumped the troop set up and instead moved to an event model. Our events are still volunteer organized and run, but events are listed on the council calendar, and any registered Girl Scout between 8th and 12th grade can register for them council-wide.

The more I looked into Adventurers, the more I realized that they were the model I hoped to emulate. I wanted to gain knowledge about how Adventurers works from top to bottom, so I reached out to Debbie, head organizer of Adventurers, to ask if a co-leader and I could attend their annual coordinator training in March. She said come on up!

The Adventurers program has been operating for Girl Scouts in grades 6 through 12 for almost forty years and runs like clockwork. Volunteers are trained to be “Adventurer Coordinators” which give them the credentials to organize and run events. Adventurers manage their own registration but work with their local council to publicize events on the council calendar. Their events include everything between kayaking, backpacking, hiking, outdoor skill building, and blacksmithing (just to name a few) – plus they also plan domestic and international trips! They even run their own weekend summer camp where girls can choose between caving, hiking, challenge courses, or camp skill sessions.

In addition to arranging events, Adventurers even funds their own scholarship to help more girls participate in events and trips! Girls can apply to receive up to $100 a year to offset costs. Additionally, the group also owns all of its own kayaking and canoeing equipment along with tons of camping, backpacking, archery, and miscellaneous gear available for checkout.

I asked Debbie to take Melissa, one of our Trailblazer M2M leaders, and I through their entire coordinator training as if we were members of the Skyline council. A role was added to our myGS account, and after being background checked, we were instructed to complete the council’s Trip & Travel training through gsLearn. During the second weekend in March, we traveled up to the Mountain Shepherd Adventure School in Catawba, VA to attend “Wild Women’s Weekend,” which is the name of their Coordinator in-person training. Normally, WWW is held at a council camp, but the council had closed the camps due to some construction work.

Over forty volunteers (and one staff member) participated in the weekend filled with a variety of trainings and activities. The Skyline council, comparatively to my own, requires a LOT of paperwork, so much of the training involved knowing what forms to fill out and what information is needed to send to the council staff. For Saturday morning, Melissa and I attended the council’s event planning training. Between rain bouts in the afternoon, we had the option to spend time hiking, tomahawk and knife throwing, making crafts, and sitting in on round table discussions. I also had a conversation with the Adventurers staff liaison to find out how the council integrates Adventurers in recruiting and patch programs. Jennifer, the staff member, said that while they don’t gain older girl members directly from Adventurers in recruiting drives, it does show parents and younger girls what Girl Scouts can offer if they stay in the program long enough.

On Saturday night, the Adventurers coordinators held their annual meeting which consisted of reviewing the events of the past year and their finances. Barbara Duerk, founder of Adventurers, also spoke. At the end of the meeting, a costume contest and a silent auction to raise scholarship funds were held. I won second place for my makeshift early troop leader uniform made by my troop leader (Mrs. Vickers) back in the 1980s. We ended the night with a song fest around an indoor campfire since it was still raining. Sunday morning consisted of Adventurers coordinator training and an ending flag ceremony. One of the neatest takeaways from the weekend was the presence of a few young women in their early twenties who were Skyline Girl Scouts and active in Adventurers programs growing up. They wanted to give back to the program that gave them such fond memories.

As a side story, I brought my OFFICIAL scarf SWAPs to hand out even though no mention of SWAPs appeared in our weekend preparations. I gave out a few to some folks including Heather, one of the Adventurer coordinators. She had gone to the Convention in Orlando this past summer, and while swapping with everyone, she kept trying to figure out who had the OFFICIAL scarf SWAPs that she was seeing in everyone’s stash. Much to her disappointment, the person remained a mystery and elusive to her. Imagine her surprise when I pulled one out eight months later in Catawba! Mystery SWAPper revealed!

The weekend was an amazing and inspiring experience and really helped us formulate our plans to continue building up our own Trailblazers M2M program. Melissa and I discussed things the whole way home and came up with a gameplan. Additionally, I’ve done a lot of thinking and researching over the past few months, and I believe we need to take a different approach to the outdoors in Girl Scouts. Not just in programming but volunteer training as well. I’m hoping to write about it this summer once things calm down enough for me to organize my thoughts in a cohesive way.

If you want to know more about Adventurers, reach out to Debbie at adventurers1912@gmail.com. The coordinators are a wonderful bunch of folks who are passionate about Girl Scouting, and they love sharing their success story!