Leadership and Finding Your Voice
Hi, my name is Cayzen N. and I am in Troop 2740. I am a Cadette Girl Scout.
One of my passions in Girl Scouts is helping girls to really find their leadership voice. As a younger Girl Scout, I was really shy and it was hard for me to talk in front of people and try new things. I was lucky to make friends with an older Girl Scout who encouraged me and showed me things that made me want to be a Girl Scout forever.
My Troop leaders have also helped me to learn that my voice is really important and so are my ideas. I had an idea last year to start my own leadership club that I call “Emerald Juliettes”. We are finishing our first year of the club and it made me start to think how important older Girl Scouts and their leaders are and that they have really valuable knowledge that they should get to share with others.
I also thought that this would help Girl Scouts keep building even more leaders in the future if we could create different opportunities for us to learn from each other and work together.
I got the idea that maybe experienced troop leaders and their daughters or girls in their troop could work together to be coaching teams for new troops at camp. The older girls could earn awards like Leadership in Action or Program Aide. I also thought that it would make the leaders that have been doing Girl Scouts for a while feel recognized for all the things they have learned over the years and let them pass that on to newer leaders.
Camping is really hard and it’s really exhausting for the leaders. When we are at camp our leaders have all of us for basically two days on their own. But I learned that leaders don’t realize how hard this can be until they actually do it so I thought that it was a good idea to try this at camp to help new leaders not be discouraged and want to camp more.
This weekend my friends Hope (Troop 2740) and Caroline (Troop 2778) came with me and two of my leaders to Camp Timberlake so that we could help New Troop 2795. It was their first camping trip. They are Daisies and Brownies.
My friend Caroline shared with the girls all her knowledge of hiking and Leave No Trace. We all worked together to teach the girls about GORP and then Caroline took the girls and their leaders on a hike. The girls had so much fun. Camp Timberlake is really pretty. Caroline helped them earn their Hiking Badge/Daisy Trail Adventure Badge.
Then Hope and I shared that when we were Girls Scouts going to camp for the first time we made a “Camp Pet” which was a little wooden snake. Then we got to help the girls make them! We told them about how cool our first camp was and about all the things we learned at our camp. We also talked a lot about traditions and encouraged them to make their own traditions.
During the camp, we also got to teach them songs and games and teach them about picking camp names. Hope was really good at teaching them games. We also got to explore Camp Timberlake with them which was really fun! I had my mom, who is one of my leaders, teach the girls about the different awards that older Girl Scouts earn and how if they continued in Girl Scouts, they could earn them too!
My mom and Ms. Andrea got to talk to the leaders and tell them about all the things we get to do as a troop and they even invited them to be a part of our Bridging Ceremony in May. We think that this will be good because we will get to see them again and we will also get the chance to have other older girls in our troop mentor them in a new tradition, bridging, and recognition!
I think it is really important that we find ways for Girl Scouts to work together and teach each other. It helps the older girls to want to stay in Girl Scouts and it helps the leaders of older girls feel appreciated for all they know. I think sometimes Girl Scouting forgets about those leaders and just how much they have done.
I think my idea of having girl and adult mentor teams for new troops is really a good one. I think that this troop is going to be around for a really long time and that they are going to do really cool things in the future. I am glad that Hope, Caroline, and myself got to help them and I think that Hope and Caroline will never forget earning their Program Aide Award with them.
May 20, 2024
