Girl Scouts re-work image to include new activities beyond
cookies and friendship badges
Gilroy – In an era where girls fend off Internet predators, eating disorders and the ever-present tentacles of targeted child marketing, the Girl Scouts might seem impossibly quaint. Nineteen-year-old Shanna Silveira remembers it hazily, an after-school program she wasn’t part of.
“All I really know about it is the cookies and the badges,” says Silveira, who grew up in Gilroy. She shrugs. “No one really introduced it to me.”
Her words echo those of Jamie Vale, a mother of two, as she watches her 4-year-old, Jamie, testing her purple roller skates. Seven-year-old Jessie, “the tomboy,” curls up beside her on their front porch.
“I don’t know what they do,” Vale said. “I wasn’t in it. They sell cookies, right?”
But the 94-year-old Scouts organization refuses to be outmoded. In September, Girl Scouts of the USA announced a 21st Century makeover, “a historic transformation to modernize the iconic organization.” The language is dramatic, but the details are sketchy. Self-mutilation, bullying and Internet etiquette have been bandied about as new topics, to join the usual camping trips and cookie sales. Advertisers in New York City are revamping the Girl Scout brand, just as they might market pick-up trucks and toothpaste.
But few scout leaders aren’t sure how the national changes will trickle down to local troops. Parent Sue Czeropski (pronounced Sir-op-ski) has poured hours into her local troop, a gaggle of green-vested Juniors. Girl Scouting today is already a far cry from the programs of Czeropski’s youth in Arizona, she says.
“Once upon a time, I sold cookies for 50 cents a box,” she said, smiling. “Girls were supposed to be teachers, nurses or stay-at-home moms. The world has certainly changed.”
Today, robotics, computer knowledge and career networking are among her troops’ favorite activities. Triangular badges with beakers and binary code spangle her 11-year-old daughter Morgan’s vest, which she proudly displays, feverishly recounting art projects and camping trips, and the time she got to care for a chincilla. Czeropski coaxes her to talk about what makes Girl Scouts great.
“Um …” Morgan squints at the ceiling. “Leadership?”
“That’s one.”
“Responsibility?”
Czeropski nods. “What else?”
Morgan grins. “Teamwork!”
But scouting officials say the larger message sometimes gets left by the wayside – a focus of the revamped Girl Scouts. The Girl Scout pledge, recited at every meeting, is sometimes obscured amid badges, crafts and cookie sales.
“If you talk to people on the street about Girl Scouts, they remember it, vaguely, as an after-school program,” said JoAnne Neil, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County. “They’ll say, ‘We did crafts and camping. We sold cookies. We got badges.’ ”
“People remember the activities,” she added, “because we didn’t speak about the impact.”
For instance, said Neil, the oft-cited cookie sales aren’t just a cute fundraiser: shilling Thin Mints teaches girls to set goals and manage money.
“It’s the best-kept secret in entrepreneurial education,” Neil contends.
Though the national organization promises “monumental changes,” the situation isn’t dire for Girl Scouts. National membership slipped briefly in 2000, but has recovered: in Santa Clara County, 1 of every 9 girls is a Scout, said Neil. But troops quickly atrophy as girls grow older. Scouting hits its peak around second grade, with the tan-vested Brownies. Each of Micki Kinkel’s four daughters said the Girl Scout Pledge, the mother recalls, but none took scouting past middle school. Even Czeropski herself quit in junior high, “when peer pressure kicked in.”
“It just wasn’t cool to be a Girl Scout anymore,” Czeropski explains. “It’s really a shame, and it’s one of the things we’re trying to change.”
Another issue is diversity. Czeropski’s troop is “pretty homogenous,” she says, with only one girl of color. She’s tried to recruit Spanish-speaking mothers, by bringing along a bilingual leader to translate her appeals for volunteers at Gilroy schools, but none have bitten. Other troops have had more success: the organization might be intimidating to those who aren’t familiar with it, Czeropski reflects. National leaders have pledged inclusivity, but how scouting will change to encompass girls of all backgrounds remains to be seen. Economically, the troops try to keep all girls in: a $20 yearly fee can be dropped for Scouts who can’t pay, said Kinkel.
But for those who don’t know what Girl Scouts do, it’s a moot point.
County leaders have wielded national influence with the Scouts: Neil was one of seven Santa Clara County Girl Scouts council representatives who helped draft the changes, as members of the national program committee. Among the hard-and-fast facts of the transformation is a nationwide restructuring, condensing 312 councils into 109. The bigger, better councils are expected to cut down on work for tired troop leaders, who often shoulder heavy workloads to make scouting happen.
That’s how Czeropski got involved. At a Girl Scout orientation at the Gilroy Senior Center, she got pumped about Girl Scouts, but learned a troop wouldn’t happen without her. Neil said her own troop has a waiting list of more than 500 girls, and not enough volunteers to lead them.
“If I wanted my daughter in Girl Scouts, I’d have to step up,” said Czeropski. “That’s typically how it happens.”
As a leader, she logged 12 to 25 hours each month, attending meetings and trainings, and scaling the organization’s background check. Now, in a different position, she’s scaled back to four or five hours a month. Kinkel, as cookie czar, devotes 6 to 10 hours a week to the cause – but only for a few weeks, she adds. Still, burnout is rampant. Czeropski prepares leader “survival kits,” packed with Band-Aids, candy, crayons and knick-knacks, as a joke.
Girl Scouts are also seeking younger leaders, twentysomethings without kids, to defray the time spent by current volunteers. The girls want younger mentors, said Neil, but they’re hard to come by. Younger women have tighter schedules, and are leery of long-term commitments. And if scouting became uncool in high school, it’s hard to redeem it among college students and young women.
But if scouting is under siege, you can’t see it on Morgan Czeropski’s glowing face, reciting the names of her six new best friends, or the splashy vest she wriggles into under her mother’s gaze. Nor is there concern for Glen Baxter, a Gilroy parent, whose 9-year-old daughter Olivia might try to fit scouting into a slew of after-school activities: basketball, sewing and church group.
“Certain things don’t need to change,” said Baxter. “Girl Scouts is just one of those things – it doesn’t need to change.”
