Is Your Troop Girl Led? I Mean REALLY Girl Led?

Girl Scouts affords girls the opportunity to develop leadership skills (and a host of other developmental skills that we can talk about later). One of the most challenging things for newer adult volunteers to grasp is the concept of Girl Scouts being "Girl Led."

I was trying to think of the best way to describe what exactly this means (because it truly is a developmental process and means something different at each level of Girl Scouts) and I came upon this report that Girl Scouts USA commissioned in 2009 called Transforming LEADERSHIP Continued: A Guide to Understanding the Girl Scout Processes.

Now, your local council has some form of leadership guide for volunteers that explains what exactly it means to be "Girl Led" (here in Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania we call it Volunteer Essentials), but I really like how GSUSA's report lays it all out into a table for each Girl Scout level.

According to GSUSA, "Girl led simply means that girls are playing an active part in figuring out the “what, where, when, how, and why” of their activities. This means girls are more engaged in playing a critical role as decision-makers in the planning and implementation of their activities. As part of a girl-adult partnership, volunteers can use this process to strengthen girls’ empowerment and decision-making roles in activities. Adults provide age-appropriate facilitation, ensuring that planning, organization, set-up, and evaluation of all activities are done jointly with girls. The girl led approach to ideas and activities ensures that girls are engaged in their learning and experience leadership and decision-making opportunities as they prepare to become active participants in their local and global communities" (p. 17).

As I stated earlier, GSUSA's report then breaks this concept down into awesome charts by Girl Scout level. So here you go....

We're going to start a series real soon, right here on this blog, on how some of our local leaders build upon this concept of being "Girl Led" right here in western Pennsylvania.

Stay tuned to upcoming blogs.....

Girl Scout Volunteers are Tea Bags

At a college I used to work at in eastern Pennsylvania, we used to begin every meeting, gathering, etc. with a Mission Moment. This served as a time to center ourselves and focus in on our task at hand. That Mission Moment might be a prayer, a poem, short story, or short devotional.

One of my former students, John, really embraced the concept of the Mission Moment. He developed an amazing Mission Moment that I'd like to share with you (I've adapted it to fit into our roles as Girl Scout volunteers).

We are all tea bags! In order to really become what we are meant to be, we have to submerge ourselves into things (i.e. being a Girl Scout volunteer). Now some volunteers have the bandwidth to keep themselves submerged for a long time and take on a lot of things. Other, due to other responsibilities can only submerge themselves for a shorter period of time or take on less responsibilities within Girl Scouts. Regardless, we are all taking part of ourselves and positively impacting the lives of girls in our troops, service areas, and councils.

Regardless of what you can commit to doing for Girl Scouts (i.e. being a troop leader, chaperoning a troop field trip, serving as a troop cookie manager, taking on a role in the service unit, serving on a council-wide committee), you make a difference. (Think about it like this...as soon as a tea bag is submerged into a hot cup of water, that water is never going to be the same again. Instead, it's going to become something stronger and better.)

Now sometimes, we leave our tea bag into that cup of water for a bit too long. We exhaust ourselves. We become burnt-out.

Here's the point of this Mission Moment....

It's okay to take your tea bag out for a while and rest, rejuvenate, and grab another tea bag when you are ready to re-submerge yourself. When you build a good team of volunteers, if you need to take a break for a bit, someone else should be willing to step in and cover your cup for a while. (Just ask for help. You'll be surprised...trust me.)

About this time last year I was feeling extremely overwhelmed with my job, school work (I'm a doctoral student), family commitments, and life in general. My tea bag was over-submerged. I had to take a step back from my duties as the Central Westmoreland Service Unit manager. I got to that point partly because I took on way too much (I tend to think sometimes that I am super-human) and didn't ask for help. Fortunately, we have a great team of volunteers, and Andrea was willing to step in an fill my shoes for a while.

At our March 3, 2016, service unit meeting, we are going to have a brief program/session on how to avoid volunteer burn-out. We have AMAZING volunteers doing AMAZING things with the girls our service unit. My colleague Cathy and I want to help you avoid burn-out.

(Please know, if you are a volunteer outside of our service unit but would like to attend this session, email me at centralwestmorelandsu@gmail.com for details. Any Girl Scout volunteer is invited to attend.)

Yours in Girl Scouts,
Chrissy Schaeffer
Service Unit Manager
Central Westmoreland Service Unit
Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania