Summer Time

Here we are looking at the long, hot weeks ahead. Some of us have Gold Award assignments, some are making plans for summer travel, some have or are looking for summer jobs.

From here the summer seems endless, but alas it will be August before we blink, and Lakeside starts August 14. That’s nine weeks from today, not a bit too soon to start thinking about next year’s Girl Scout activities. Here are some ideas.

Gold Award

Maria, Laura, and Callie got together a couple of weeks ago to look at where they are in the process and what they need to work on this summer. Maria has four IPP’s, and has finished the Leadership Pin. She has a good start with Careers, but needs about 30 more hours, some of which she may be able to find at GHP. She’s starting to work on the Senior Girl Scout Challenge and may have the community service project done for that. She’s trying to finish the Career and Challenge components this summer so that she can start on her project in the fall. She already has her project figured out, so once she’s done with the Career and Challenge, she can fill out her project proposal and apply for a Gold Award Committee mentor.

Callie and Laura (and maybe Crystal) have three IPP’s and need a Focus Book charm. Callie probably has finished her Leadership Pin, and Laura may have. They are working on their logs. Both Callie and Crystal will probably complete the 40 hours for Careers this summer while they are working at the Camp Meriwether Barn. Callie has already done her diary for that last summer. If Crystal has her diary, that’s great, and if not she can keep one this summer.

Laura may work out her Career hours with her crafts business and website, so all three are in good shape to finish their Career Pin by the end of summer. Their 4B Challenge is similar to the old Girl Scout Challenge, but seems to be pointing toward the project they choose, and indeed may be designed to help them choose a project. If they can finish up IPP/Focus Book Charm and Career Exploration this summer, that will only leave Leadership and 4B Challenge for fall.

The Gold Award is not everything in Girl Scouts

Although we have always had a lot of girls who enjoy the Gold Award process, it’s not all we do. There are some individual and group activities that are not related to the Gold Award. One thing is the Destinations program. Elizabeth, Anne, Katie and Christina all took exciting trips courtesy of the various travel programs. Scholarships are available, so it’s not a matter of your paying the cost. Tabby really liked the Gavel Club. Even if you don’t think you’d be interested, be nice to your trusty advisors, and take a look at the links. Sometimes trying something you don’t think you’d like turns out great.

One thing we need to find out about is the exciting news about the new Human Papillomavirus Vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. Our own Dr. Unger has contributed to the research, and we have to get her to tell us about what it is, how it works, and how it will affect us. Maybe we need to plan how to share her with more than just our troop.

Who’s Where

Karen and Jessie will join the college ranks, and as usual for our members’ first year out of the troop, we’ll register them as troop adults. Any of our college sophomores and juniors (juniors already!) who want to register with our troop are always welcome to do so. Lifetime memberships are less expensive right after you graduate, and you never have to shell out the $10 again. Mrs. Lott has a link on our website for lifetime memberships. Whether you register or not, you are always, always, always a member of Troop 4715.

Maria and Brittany will be seniors next year. Crystal, Laura, and Callie will be juniors. Katie A., our Juliette friend from Nease’s Needlework, might want to join us, and that will be great. Your weary but committed troop advisors are willing to take in any new members that are juniors and seniors, but we’re beginning to see the end of our troop in another couple of years, so please, not a lot of younger girls.

Next Fall

We will need to help our Gold Award girls get through some of their requirements, so we may be looking for leadership hours by helping out at Brownie and Junior Weekends at Timber Ridge. Those dates usually are announced in the late summer. We may need to plan some activities around the Focus Books that get chosen, or we may need to make some Career Exploration visits, and we’ll have to see what we can do together to work on the 4B Challenge

Sometime this summer your trusty advisors will need to get together to work out dates for meetings and camping trips. We have to send in our camping application ASAP for fall camping, so if you have ideas about where and when you’d like to go, please call or email and let us know. Since our group is small, we kind of have to fit in wherever the Council can put us, so an early application is a good thing. Jessie won’t be far away, so maybe we can finally go geo-caching. We can always take registered Girl Scouts with us when we go camping.

We can still work on IPP’s. Mr. Callaway can be secured for a First Aid and CPR course for the Emergency Preparedness IPP. There are new IPP’s on the national GS website including such intriguing titles as Sew Glam, Hi-Tech Hide & Seek (geo-caching), B Extreme (more adventurous activities / individual sports), G.O. Girl (getting organized), In the Pink (fighting breast cancer), Uncovering the Evidence (forensics), Couch Potato, Global Girls, Home Is Where the Heart Is (homelessness in our community) and On Your Own (life skills – right where Juliette Low started!). Whaddaya think of that!

New Girl Scout Program

And guess what else! The Girl Scout Program is about to change again. It seems as if the program gets a make-over about every ten years, so this is the second time we’ve felt the shaky feeling that tradition is about to go away. It never does, no matter how much it updates.