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