3 December 2008
Declining Interest in Girl Scouts - By Parents
Posted by admin under: leadership .
Here’s an interesting pair of stories appearing on the same day. In Iowa, we’re getting the recently trumpeted 250,000 girls lost meme. To be fair, that article seems to make the best PR push for the realignment that I’ve read. Then, in South Carolina, Kim Kimzey at goupstate.com says this
About 700 girls in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties are on a waiting list to join the Girl Scouts, according to a local staff person with the organization.
Though many want to be Daisies, Brownies, Juniors and Cadettes, there aren’t enough Girl Scout leaders and other adult volunteers, said Teresa Foster, a community development manager with Girl Scouts of South Carolina - Mountains to Midlands.
Parents call and tell Foster they filled out a card, but no one has called about a troop.
“Our response to them is, ‘I’m sorry, but all our troops are full and we don’t have a troop for you, but we’re looking for more adult volunteers, would you like to volunteer?’ ” Foster said.
Some do volunteer, but Foster said many times the response is no. The parent may work long hours or have other children to care for.
So, what’s really going on? Are the girls not joining or are the parents telling their daughters they can’t join when they find out they have to do more than just drop them off at a weekly meeting? I actually agree with the GSUSA that leadership is important. I disagree with them on the method of teaching it, but I agree on the basic premise. Too many parents are gravitating toward an attitude of “somebody else will take care of it”. Maybe the GSUSA shouldn’t be spending so much time trying to figure out why girls are joining. Maybe they should be trying to figure out why parents aren’t stepping up to lead a troop. 700 girls on a waiting list? That doesn’t sound like a lack of interest from girls.
Possibly Related Posts:- Same Mistake, Same Impression
- Change it Up! Basis of GSUSA Changes
- Journeys Info on GSUSA Site
- Parents Not Doing Their Duty
- GSUSA: Team Meeting
4 Comments so far...
Eric Says:
3 December 2008 at 4:58 pm.
Our local paper ran an article about a wait list for Girl Scouts about a year and a half ago. My wife called and volunteered to start a troop for my daughter and other girls her age. And she became a troop leader - eventually! It was such a struggle just to get basic info out of people. If my daughter wasn’t so set on being a Girl Scout, and my wife wasn’t so commited to being a leader, we would have just given up on the whole thing.
To make matters worse, there are still girls on the waiting list. My daughter’s troop only has 5 girls, and my wife has practically begged them to send more girls her way. But the paid staff member responsible for it just seems to so unorganized and/or clueless that nothing ever comes of it.
I think Scouting is one of the best things that you can give to you kids. However, there is a wide chasm between the quality of the Boy and Girl Scout programs. The Boy/Cub Scouts seem to be so much better organized than the Girls Scouts. Even something as basic as a Pack doesn’t seem to have a twin in Girl Scouting. Even in the same school or town, each Troop seems to be on their own. The success and quality of the troop’s program is entirely dependant on that leader.
Look at the Blogroll on the right. Almost every one of them are for Boy/Cub Scout sites. It’s very hard to find the same kind of Girl Scout resources on the net. Maybe that in particular has more to do with the tech-savviness of the leaders, but I don’t much structure or support to the Girl Scouting program.
And with the Journeys program, it seems like the gap will only widen. Oh well, just wait until she’s 14 and can join a Venturing crew!
admin Says:
3 December 2008 at 5:50 pm.
I noticed the dearth of Girl Scout blogs, too. Single-interest blogs seem to be mostly a guy thing. Moms who blog seem to have a wide subject list for the most part and I just can’t seem to find any Girl Scout blogs. I can find a post here and there buried in a blog, but not more than one blog so far has Girl Scouts as its primary focus.
I also don’t understand and don’t like the Girl Scout model of troops. My council made it even worse by forcibly disbanding troops at the end of their age level. So, a Daisy troop that was graduating to Brownies had to disband their troop and then create a new Brownie troop with the same families. It was a nightmare. Only after the person who had that job moved on could we at least get to the dysfunctional normal of having a troop that only exists as long as the current families are in it. There are almost no long serving Brownie troops because they bridge up to Cadettes and the Brownie troop is no more. Senior troops exist because the parents stay on after their daughters go to college and help out a new crop of girls coming into the troop. I guess that will be the Ambassador level, now. That level is the only one that kind of functions like a BSA troop.
In my area, we tried to make sure the troops we created still existed after we left. We would start a new troop at each level as our girls aged and encourage our old troop to continue recruiting. It only partially worked. Our old Brownie troop still exists, but the Daisy and Junior troops died out. The Cadette troop will continue because we’ve got leaders lined up to take over as we bridge out. My daughter is pretty much set on switching to the BSA after she graduates out of Cadettes, too.
The membership chair in our area is a volunteer position and recruitment is generally done on a district-wide (service unit) basis. In both cases, paid or unpaid, the job depends on the individual. If she doesn’t do her job, girls don’t get placed. We started our Daisy troop with my daughter and her friend and added 10 more from the waiting list. When my wife and I did the recruitment job we were told to start troops from the people at the meeting, but we didn’t care. We added people to the waiting list and called troops to find places for the girls. Some parents never bothered to follow up, but there was nothing we could do about that.
The BSA model is superior. Most moms I know who are in both organizations acknowledge that, but the GSUSA is pretty fierce in defending their substandard method. It makes troops more like social cliques which is something the GSUSA tries to combat so I don’t know why they stick to something that reinforces that outcome.
Still, it is really hard to get parents in GSUSA or BSA to step up to leadership. So, I look at the parents as the first pressure point to bandage in order to fix the bleeding of membership.
LauraB Says:
3 December 2008 at 10:09 pm.
I think part of the problem with the GSUSA troop structure is the emphasis on grade level troops. In my current service unit there is (at least, but it’s a small town) one troop per grade, but not a single mixed grade troop. How can the troop be expected to continue if there is only one set of girls who all bridge at the same time? Admittedly, we do keep the same troop number, but that still means that a single troop exists for 13 years maximum, Kindergarten Daisies to Senior Seniors/Ambassadors.
However, in the troop I graduated out of we have a mixed age troop set up. There is technically a Daisy, Brownie, Junior, and Cadette/Senior(/Ambassador) troop but all troops meet on the same day at the same time. Opening and closing is a combined event with individual troops operating more like patrols during the body of the meeting. Much better retention, of both Leaders and girls, and many, many more higher award recipients and more older girls per girls in town than in the areas with the grader per troop system.
I do think there is something to having the girls with the same girls for longer periods of time, but I still don’t think it’s being done quite right, either. Not sure where the balance is, but we’ll figure it out eventually…
Eric Says:
3 December 2008 at 10:46 pm.
The word “clique” really jumped out at me. My daughter joined a Daisy troop at her school a couple of years ago. A couple of moms were the leaders. My wife knew the co-leader, but not the leader. That first year, the troop did absolutely nothing. The leader basically explained the requirements for the Daisy petal, then had them color for an hour. They got their petals but had no idea what they were for!
Then came complaints that they needed help. So my wife stepped up and was welcomed by the leader. Then another mom also stepped up. I guess the leader liked her better, because after that, my wife no longer existed. Seriously. Within two meetings, the leader literally would not speak to her. I’m telling you, Admin, there was NOTHING negative that had happened between them. Nothing. Finally my wife asks her if there’s anything she did, or anything they need to talk about. Her response was, “You make me uncomfortable.” I kid you not. So we tried to just let it go, but then it got to the point where she was taking it out on our daughter. The last straw was the Memorial Day parade. Every single girl from that troop was given something to carry or hand out, except our girl.
So after we saw the article in the paper looking for leaders, my wife decided to give it a try. When she talked to the folks at the council, they were more concerned with hurting the feelings of the old troop’s leader than helping her get started and take some girls off of the waiting list! Finally, she got a few girls, and it’s been great. My daughter has made some friends from another school, and they’re much more active.
As for the old troop, they’re close to disbanding (big surprise). The initially had 17 girls because they met twice a month, immediately after early dismissal days from school, which was very convenient. Now they’re down to 4 or 5. The girls who quit told our daughter that it was because it was boring. And of course it would be awkward to invite or have them in the new troop, because that would seem clique-y. And so now you have a dozen or so girls who won’t get the benefits of Scouting because of one lousy leader.
If this had happened in Boy Scouts it could have been addressed with the Pack, the Chartered Organization, District, or even Council. With Girl Scouts, not even close. In the end, it’s worked out better for our family. But part of why you become a leader is to help make a difference in the lives of the other kids, too. Now the other 12 or so will never know what they could have had. Oh well, you just focus on the group you do have and make the best of it.
