Treflienne

If I remember right, that Webelos is your daughter. What are you planning for next year? Any plans for a BSA4G girls' troop in February 2019?

GS camps are owned by the council, and their amentities vary. I can speak to what I have seen in my state. Generally girl scout troops do not camp together as a troop during the summer. The council-owned Girl Scout camps are busy with council-run day-camp and over-night camp programs from the time school gets out in late June until sometime in August. During this time period troops are not permitted to reserve campsites at the girl scout camps, because they are in use by summer camp. And girls attend summer camp as individuals, not as troops. (A troop wouild be allowed to camp a

I think GSUSA is dying as a scouting organization -- or rather living on as a completely different kind of program for kids. Instead of girls who are old-enough to do so, growing through the game of scouting, what I am seeing being promoted instead is a light-weight feel-good program for little girls: do crafts once a month, sell cookies, and call yourself a Girl Scout. It makes me sad. I've been a GSUSA member for decades. I am really quite appreciative that BSA will be opening up to girls, offering girls a chance at a more traditional scouting program. Don't know whether it will

GSUSA has this problem. They recruit kindergarteners into Daisies. And these kindergarteners really cannot do much yet. By the time the girls are old enough to use knives and light fires, their families have become accustomed to Girl Scouts as a once-a-month light-and-fluffy not-much-asked-of-kid-or-family activity. When my daugher hit second grade (start of Brownies) I signed up for my GSUSA council's "troop camp training" which is a prerequisite to building fires with your troop or taking kids camping. I also invited the other moms in the troop to take the training along with me, if

I heard it as "Jaffle Iron" -- but I haven't heard the term for decades, brings back memories. The friend who introduced me to a jaffle iron was an Australian girl, in Japan, a scout in my troop, which was registered with GSUSA TOFS but had British leaders. The cultural exchange part of scouting is something I highly value.

I've been gradually working my way through the training videos on my.scouting.org, in particular the SM/ASM series. I must say that I am impressed. They are helping me understand how, in theory, the roles fit together in an idealized troop. I found the GSUSA leader training (which is all council-specific) singularly unhelpful. As a troop leader, mostly I had to rely on memories of my childhood troops, and my collection of old Girl Scout handbooks, supplemented with what I could turn up with the help of google. The one training I did find helpful was my council's "Tent Camp Training" -

This is a huge problem in my service unit for the Daisy/Brownie/Junior (K-5) troops. And it is a change from the era of my childhood. Back the in the 1960s/1970s (when my mother was a leader and my sisters and then I were scouts) many mothers were SAHMs. In my experience, the scouts met weekly in large multi-grade groups immediately after school, when both girls and moms were available. Everyone was home from the meeting in time for dinner to be on the table when dad got home. Girl Scouts was definitely not family-focussed, but (apart from camping weekends and extended field trips)

There is a difference. In BSA camping is required for rank advancement. In GSUSA camping is completely optional - a girl could earn Gold Award never having camped a day in her life. I've been looking at some of the BSA training videos on my.scouting.org. According to these videos, the scoutmaster and troop committee are supposed to ensure that there is an outdoor program. In GSUSA, leaders are not exhorted to make sure that the troop has an outdoor program. I would expect that a girl who did not like camping would, after looking at the BSA rank advancement requirements, dec

The WAGGGS symbol is a trefoil, not a fleur-de-lis. Worn by Girl Scouts and Girl Guides all over the world, who are WAGGGS members. https://www.wagggs.org/en/about-us/who-we-are/symbols-movement/

I don't think that there would be enough interested girls for all the current troops to go coed, even if they wanted to. I know one girl who is gung-ho about joining BSA in 2019: my daughter. Problem is I know only one girl: my daughter. Seems like it will need a minimum of 5-10 girls for a viable patrol or "linked" troop. None of her female schoolmates are interested. The girls in her GSUSA troop (grades 6-12) don't seem very enthusiastic about camping. About a month ago I talked with the scoutmasters of the three boy scout troops in our town -- to see if they were aware of any girls

Because 11-14 girls and 11-14 boys naturally separate and don't want anything to do with each other. Even at church we have coed elementary school stuff, coed high school stuff, and separate boys and girls groups for the 6th-8th grades. Also, in a coed environment tasks can easily divide along gender roles, depriving the kids of a chance to learn valuable skills more commonly associated with the other gender. The linked-troop option seems very nice in reducing the overhead involved in getting a new troop off the ground, and in providing institutional know-how. But I can see

From my point of view as a parent of a girl, the ideal would be for my daughter to join a well-established, long-running, girls-only troop which has long experience using the BSA program. Unfortunately such troops do not exist now, and will not exist in 2019, though they might possibly exist in ten years' time. For I do see benefits to a single-sex enviroment, for both the boys and the girls, especially for the middle school grades, and especially for kids who attend coed schools. But a well-functioning coed group might be better than a poorly-functioning single-sex group. So that

I was sorry to hear about Tampa Turtle's experience. I would have expected better behaviour. Even though GSUSA dropped "courteous" from the Girl Scout Law when it was revised in 1972.

Local units are the face of Scouting and the boots on the ground to make any program work. But local units can do only so much to rescue National from their own bumbling mistakes (then and now). Same issue in GSUSA. There are some GSUSA folks who think that the GSUSA national organization has long made too many poor decisions about program materials and program direction. Now that another choice (BSA) is becoming available, some of these folk may turn up in BSA as refugees of a sort. I have no idea how many. My pet theory is that part of the problem for GSUSA is that GS

Some of us history-minded GSUSA oldtimers who are thinking of switching to BSA might like "Girl Guides". But I see two big problems with "Girls Guides" as a name for BSA4G: GSUSA would hate it, because they are the WAGGGS member in the USA, and BSA is not. And the girls themselves who don't know much scouting history, just like their older American sisters 100 years ago, will want to be called "scouts" and not something else.

I found Eagle1993's description of their local troop's plans for adding girls very interesting. (a girl patrol in existing troop, or a girl troop meeting at same time/place as the boys.) Has anyone heard, in their towns, of anyone planning on starting up an actually separate troop for girls? (I.e. at least meeting at a different time or in a different room than the boys, even if sharing some resources.)

I've been lurking for a little while, trying to learn a little about the differences between BSA and GSUSA culture, but I guess I'll jump in and speak up now. I have a 6th grade daughter, who after hearing the BSA plans to admit girls in 2019, and after reading an old Boy Scout handbook, tells me she wants to become a Boy Scout as soon as the program is available to girls her age. So we are thinking about crossing the Tiber. A couple of comments on the differences: BSA has camping and outdoor skills built into the rank advancement. GSUSA does not: outdoor stuff is compl