Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect the nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience and just plain love for one another.
Erma Bombeck
Let’s see…let me throw out some numbers here.
In our medium-sized Council we have approximately 5,000 adults are involved, on an ongoing basis, with our troops…
5,000 volunteers give about 4 hours of their time EACH week…
That’s 20,000 hours each week…
Multiply that by about 36 weeks each year…
That’s 720,000 hours each year.
Or to put it another way, it is the equivalent of 82 years EACH year!!!
Add to that program volunteers, site directors, training volunteers, first aid trainers…and we’re talkin’ some significant time!!!!
Our 24,000 girls are very fortunate to have each of you. YOU make this great program happen for them.
I speak for our staff and our Board in saluting the vital work that you do bring the best possible leadership development program to our girls in 10-counties.
THANK YOU! You are the reason we are a GREAT Girl Scout Council!!!!
Each year on February 22nd, Girl Scouts participate in activities and projects to honor our sister Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world. World Thinking Day was created in 1926 at the 4th Girl Guide/Girl Scout International Conference held at the Camp Edith Macy (now called the Edith Macy Conference Center). On that day, it was decided that there should be a special day when Girl Scouts and Girl Guides all around the world think of each other and give thanks and appreciation to their sister Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.
Today, 30,000 children die every day from poverty and neglect, and two billion people live without adequate food and basic needs. The theme for World Thinking Day 2010 is “girls worldwide say that together we can end extreme poverty and hunger”. This theme is taken from the first Millennium Development Goal and is part of out WAGGGS Global Action Theme. The aim of this theme is to raise awareness among everyone about the situation and improve the lives of the poorest people in the world.
Below is a link that can help you plan activities around this theme and can offer you resources for ending hunger and poverty.
Whatever your level, you can make a difference and take the lead – discover, connect and take action against extreme poverty and hunger!!!
As we are all well aware, the natural disaster that befell Haiti this week is one of unimaginable and epic proportions. And as we are inundated with news accounts by the minute thanks to You Tube, Twitter and Facebook we ask ourselves, “What can I do”, “How can we help” – and we ask these questions because we are Girl Scouts and we have a commitment and desire to TAKE ACTION.
Well, girls, it all gets back to technology, doesn’t it? And if you have been following my blogs, you know that I am personally, and we are collectively, trying to keep up with all that is new (every day!!!!) in technology and on the information highway!!
So for our Council and for you, this means that we are using technology for every aspect of our operations, communications and, yes, now the cookie program! Now when I sold cookies as a Girl Scout in New York City “a while” back, we went door-to-door…in apartment buildings! In recent years, the “cookie booth” came into vogue as a good, efficient and safe way to have contact with the most number of people in a neighborhood. Now, in 2010, YOU have the opportunity to market, advertise, and promote the cookie program online – NOT to sell cookies, but to get the word out and take orders – all sales still have to be transacted in-person.
To find out more about this, check out the 411 On Online Marketing and Safety-Wise Learn about “Online Marketing for Girl Scout Product Activities” – must do’s, can do’s, cannot do’s and a “virtual vocab”.
This is all new and is a great opportunity for you to take your tech skills and combine them with your Girl Scout marketing knowledge on the cookie product and program…that will most likely result in increasing your orders and actual sales. I know you have all planned a budget around your anticipated activities this year and I hope that you successfully meet your budget goals. Remember also, that the cookie sale supports the Council as we provide literally hundreds of programs, trainings and camp activities for all of you!
Next month we are expanding on one of two parts of our annual Women of Distinction program and offering a Leadership Summit for YOU! - our Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors. In the past we have had a “girl reception” as part of our Women of Distinction program where, at a luncheon, girls have the opportunity to meet the outstanding women that we honor every year – women who had distinguished themselves both professionally and in their commitment to their communities.
This January we are expanding this opportunity for our girls by having an all-day (8:30AM – 3:00PM) Leadership Summit on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at the Moorestown Friends School. In addition to a luncheon with the 2010 honorees, there will be seven workshops offered, all focused on different topics that will help you explore the personal and professional skills and resources that you will need to advance and make a positive change in the world! Is your interest in ecology and sustainability? – advocacy to make positive changes in your community? – where to begin your journey in your search for the right college for you? – personal finance and money management? – conflict resolution and time management? – healthy living as it relates to your personal leadership skills? – or a Uniquely ME! program exploring your personal values and those things that really matter the most to you?
We have something for everyone!!!!
Please join us and your fellow Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors, as we partner with over 35 prominent women who are experts and leaders in their fields to gain the self-esteem, skills and resources it takes to be successful!
October 31st…birthday of Juliette Gordon Low…Founder of Girl Scouting.
Question: If Juliette Low were alive today, why would she be considered remarkable?
(No, the answer is NOT because she would be 149 years old!!!)
If Juliette Low were alive today, she would be considered remarkable because she would still be regarded as a pioneer who created something that no one else did, or has, since that time – that time in 1912.
Juliette “Daisy” Low was born 18-months before the start of the American Civil War. She came from a well-to-do family, one of six children. A bright youngster, Daisy was creative and talented as a child, who early-on had a love for the arts. As a child, she wrote poetry, sketched, and wrote and acted in plays. In adulthood she was a skilled painter and sculptor.
After meeting and working in England with Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, Daisy became interested in the new youth movement. Upon her return home to Savannah, Georgia she called a cousin, saying, “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!” That was March 9th.
Three days later, on March 12, 1912 in Savannah, eighteen girls met in two patrols, named Carnation and White Rose.
Girl Scouting was created.
Two years later there were 1,000 registered Girl Scouts. One year after that, 1915, there were 5,000 members. By 1918 membership was at 9,714!!!
If you’ve been following my other blogs, you know I am fascinated by communication technology and the rate at which new tools are becoming available to us on an almost daily basis. See where I’m going here?
Juliette Low created something unique, marketed it, promoted it, organized it and made it into something never before created, or since replicated. And she did it with no internet, no facebook, no twitter, no blogging, no cell phone. She did have a telephone, but it did not even have numbers, a rotary or buttons on it. When she picked up the receiver (the piece you talk into J) she was connected with an operator – a real live person who would then connect her to someone else who was fortunate enough to have a telephone…and if there was no one at the other end, she could not leave a message…because there were no answering machines.
If Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low were able to be here today, she might think that we are pretty amazing because of all that we have available to us today. But I would go up to her and tell her how truly remarkable I thought SHE was – creating something that spread like wildfire, and became a part of our nation’s history!
Girl Scout Cadettes, Seniors and Ambassadors! Let’s talk about travelling!!!
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Mark Twain
Travel IS education.
Meeting people from other countries, other continents – even from other states within our own country - opens up a new world of discovery where we find that we are more alike in our humanity than we are different. And with all the strife and war going on in the world, what better time to come to the realization of the commonality of our human condition!
Ten years ago, my family sponsored a 13-year old girl named Saoirse, from Belfast, Northern Ireland through a summer program designed to get Belfast youth out of harms way during the “troubles”.
We recently took a trip to Ireland and visited Saoirse and her family for a day. They are poor and struggle to make ends meet. Saoirse is a mother herself now, but has never forgotten her 8-weeks in “America” and how she came to appreciate the value of travelling. Her mother told us that she also had an opportunity to go to America when she was young, but that ultimately circumstances prevented the trip that she said “would have changed my life”.
In Girl Scouting we recognize that we are citizens of a global community. We have World Centers in Mexico, India, Switzerland and England. We have our Destinations program that brings girls together, nationally and internationally, for programs of interest.
Please take this opportunity to explore the possibilities of participating in one of the Destinations programs offered! In 2010 there are 47 national and international opportunities!! The link to learn more about this is http://www.gscsnj.org/travel.php. Your Council Destinations contact is Lauren Gaynor at lgaynor@gscsnj.org. Lauren can answer any questions you have and will process your application.
It’s a big world out there, with lots of friends waiting to be discovered!
Greetings to our Senior and Ambassador Girl Scouts from your CEO, Mary Connell!
Hmmm…I’m “blogging” you!
I suppose I could have written to you in a print newsletter and sent it to you USPS (aka snail-mail). Or I could have e-mailed you…but only *28% of you use e-mail on a regular basis. Yes, you’ve gotten WAY past U.S. mail and e-mail. I read recently that probably the best way for me to reach you is either by text messaging or MMS/picture messaging you (*83% of US mobile teens use text-messaging and 56% use MMS/picture messaging). But I wonder if that communication might get lost in the (average) *2,899 messages that you receive per month, which is 566% higher than just two years ago…hmmmm.
In fact, *37% of US mobile subscribers between the ages of 13-17 access the internet on their phones – second only to the same age group in China! Since there are only 16% of you who even bother with a land line, I won’t even consider calling you at home.
You also communicate on Facebook and Twitter.
I’m getting there, but for now I’ll give this blog a shot at saying hello and to tell you that we are very glad, and proud, to have you all as our teen Girl Scouts, role models for our younger Girl Scouts coming up through the ranks.
You, Seniors and Ambassadors, are the future leaders in your families, in your communities and in our world. So many women who have distinguished themselves personally and professionally look back on their childhood Girl Scout experience as the starting point for their leadership development…mixed in with heavy doses of fun and friendship…and they always smile in relating their Girl Scout experience that many years later. These are women who are successful homemakers…local, state and national government officials…CEOs of companies and sometimes a mix of all three!
In Girl Scouting we are working at YOUR speed – we will communicate with you using YOUR words, develop programs that you’ve told us are of interest to YOU, and help you with your Silver and Gold Awards service projects that become YOUR passion and change YOUR world.
Next summer – you’ll hear more details this Fall – we are having a Destinations program conference over three days for you on the topic of Healthy Media Images. This program will only be open to teen Girl Scouts who reside in any of the four Councils in the state of New Jersey. We will have some of the top women – you’ll recognize their names! - in the media implementing workshops that you will be able to attend on a college campus. If you are interested in helping to plan this program please contact me.
I am looking to create a “Sudden Service” Senior/Ambassador Task Group to work with me in sharing the great program that we have in Girl Scouting with people throughout our Council who can support our work in the future – individuals, corporations, foundations. Let me know if this might interest you as well – you have a story to tell and it’s a great one…and so much better coming from you than from me!
We look for your input and suggestions in this time of great change. We are working hard to keep up with YOU!!!...and it’s not only technology. Have you heard there are another 100 new words recently added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition????
That said, I’ll sign off on this first blog by saying that I hope you all had a great summer, even if your time off was a staycation, enjoying locavore delights and steering clear of your frenemies. In September you could very well become my flashmob focus for the October 24th annual meeting. I might even send you a vlog to remind you, but I’ll need to procure some memory foam so I don’t forget.
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