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By MaryHelen Swanson
Leea Biederman, Becca Hanson, Hope Hubbard, Josie Osowski and Megan Stuber are learning valuable lessons in a program that has nothing to do with school. They belong to the Girl Scouts.
Look at the photos accompanying this column and you’ll see what they have been up to lately: learning about the homeless and learning about being businesswomen. In the course of their lives, they potentially could be both.
But in the process of being a Girl Scout, they will most likely learn how to prepare themselves to avoid the homeless situation and grow up to become awesome businesswomen, or teachers or astronauts, or carpenters or college professors or ... even excellent mothers and wives.
Girl Scouting doesn’t get the attention it once did, but it’s still a wonderful organization for girls. So many new avenues have opened to the young ladies that there are no boundaries to their achievements in life.
The program was founded in 1912 by Juliette Gordon Low, that is something every Girl Scout learns in the early years as a Brownie and remembers for the rest of their lives.
Low’s dream for girls had no limits. The Girl Scout program doesn’t either.
Personal memories of Girl Scouts go way back to the mid-50s when my mother first became a leader for my sister’s troop.
A tag-a-long, I spent many hours hiking, learning knots, making s’mores, leaf prints, in general, growing up in Girl Scouts. I was crafting flowers out of crepe paper just the like the older girls by age five and was able to demonstrate the technique to my kindergarten class.
When I finally became old enough, and had gone through the Brownie program, I remember many terrific experiences in Girl Scouts.
Those after school meetings in the basement of our home, flag ceremonies, father-daughter banquets, badge work and day camping. I still have my sash filled with wonderful badge patches. You guessed it, mom was a camp counselor too, and those memories at Katherine Abbot with the baby mice and the Spanish rice and the blind-folded night hikes will forever stick in my mind.
Girl Scout prepares girls for a world of change and wonders. The chance to explore avenues of interest starting at a young age immensely helps young women to decided their paths in life.
And they learn to become productive, useful citizens ready to help others wherever they can.
It’s so good to see that Girl Scouting is alive and growing in EC Minnesota.
It’s good to know that these girls will be prepared to handle all that this big, confusing world will deal out to them.
Don’t get the idea that Girl Scouting is nothing but selling cookies, it’s a whole big, wonderful world much more.
Would you like to have your girls in scouts? Check out the following: Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys, St. Paul, Minnesota 55107-2214; (651) 227-8835, 1-800-845-0787 or e-mail:
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; or visit the Web Site: http://www.girlscoutsrv.org.
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