Reevaluating Dated Council Property Plans
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camping, camps, councils, gsusa, money, outdoors
Echo Reardanz, a member of the Central Maryland council, recently shared her thoughts about the recent news from Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana regarding their Long Range Property Plan involving camp sales. She posted this message in various Facebook groups, and I also received permission to share it here as well.
In 2009 Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana (GSGCNWI) started their Long Range Property plan and announced phase one in 2011 ….. Please note this is also the same time that GSUSA revamped all their badges, introduced Journeys. It was when GS programming moved significantly away from any outdoor focus. It was only in 2014 when at the GSUSA National Convention in Utah that GSUSA members demanded an outdoor journey and then the subsequent Girls choice badges where girl membership voted on outdoor badges (over other choices) that the realization started to slowly dawn on GSUSA that girls need and want the outdoors. In 2017 GSUSA launched the option of an outdoor journey at each level. This past summer GSUSA partnered with North Face to launch new outdoor high adventure badges. GSUSA now has 4 program pillars one of which is “outdoors.” GSUSA in its 116th Congress legislative agenda document stated that “in 2019 Girl Scouts will expand its historic Mariner and Trailblazer troops across the country. By participating in these specialized troops, girls seeking wilderness and nautical adventures will develop their technical skills in fun and unique ways.” Continue reading
This will be a quick hitter, but I just wanted to share that I’m creating a YouTube series. I try to present some sort of enrichment after each of our service unit leader meetings, but not everybody can make them. Last year, I sent out a survey to our service unit asking how they wanted to receive UNOFFICIAL trainings, and I was surprised at the number who wanted a webinar format. Well, webinars are hard to schedule, so instead I thought I’d record my presentations instead. I figured recording them live at the meetings wouldn’t be very effective, so maybe I’d try out recording the presentation directly from my laptop the same way I recorded the goofy 
But how do we do this? That was the $64,000 question. Everybody these days is struggling to get volunteers. Many parents want to find troops, but there aren’t very many that want to step up and take the reigns to start a brand new one. I realized that we needed to take a new approach. In the past, it seems like our organization just relied on recruiting girls but crossing our fingers that the leaders and new troops would follow. We needed to be more aggressive. We go all out to show that Girl Scouts gives girls opportunities and an experience that they wouldn’t necessarily have elsewhere. Well, what if we showed women that they’ll also get that in return if they become a leader? Side note: I realize men can be leaders too. In fact, we have a male leader in our service unit! But for this, we specifically targeted women.
You may have noticed I’ve been AWOL lately. It’s been one crazy summer, but not like the John Cusack movie. June started off kinda slow, but then July has gone into overdrive. Here’s what I’m in the middle of right now, and I’ll keep it somewhat short because I’m going in a thousand directions all at once. But I wanted to briefly check in so that you all didn’t think the Girl Scout mafia finally caught up to me.
GSUSA has recently put a focus on bringing civics education to the forefront. On June 3rd, they hosted a webcast that was livestreamed entitled Civics Education: Preparing the Next Generation of Informed and Engaged Citizens. It’s described on GSUSA’s website as such: “This nonpartisan event is an opportunity for community leaders, public officials, and education experts to consider how out-of-school civics programs can prepare the next generation to be involved citizens with a deeper understanding of their government —both now and for the rest of their lives.” It’s archived on their website and can be found here: 
