The neighborhood girls are again struggling to keep their troops going. The girls want to be scouts. They like camping and hiking and all the skills that are learned in Scouts. The struggle is for adult male or female leadership. (Men make great G.S. leaders; the few who have had the courage to try so as to provide a troop for their own daughters, have had a wonderful experience and will witness to the fact. The G.S. Council even has designed a uniform for them!)
Leadership is not the responsibility of the Sponsoring Institution nor of the Girl Scout Council; it is the responsibility of the parents of the girls involved.
Leaders in the past few years, Mrs. Cheri McKee, Mrs. Mary Alice Krueger, Mrs. Betty Klinefelter, Miss Vickie Nerviani, have not one girl of Girl Scout age among them yet they have given hours and hours of their time and energy to other peoples girls.
They believed in girls and the program. (Note past tense.) Too bad so few mothers do.
Lack of parent co-operation quickly burns out both leaders and the few parents who do all the volunteering.
We have some new leadership coming in this fall — young women who grew up in Scouting and are anxious to assume responsibility for a troop.
Let’s hope enough parents will come through to fill the required job classification on the Troop registration form and then to make Scouting a reality for their girls.
Originally published in The Paper, September–October 1973.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1973_09.pdf, printed page(s) 6.
