Troop Philosophy

Program Goals

Girl Scouts has four interacting Program Goals for the girls.

1. For you to become the very best person you can.  You should feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, be able to try new activities and be open to new challenges, and your talents and skills in new ways.
2. To respect other people, build strong friendships, and to learn to understand people who are different from yourself.
3. To build your own set of values that will help you to make decisions and that will guide your actions
4. To build your leadership skills and to contribute to your society by helping other people.

These goals guide how the troop works and is run.

We’ve divided the troop into two patrols, and each troop has a patrol leader. The patrols and patrol leaders were picked at random. Every two months or so, we’ll pick new patrol leaders and new patrols so that every girl will have a chance to be a leader. 

We hope this will permit each girl to have some leadership opportunities and also to build closer friendships with the girls in her patrol.  As new patrols are chosen, the girls will have the opportunity to work more closely with each of the girls in our troop.

Being a Patrol Leader gives each girl a chance to be "in charge" and to start learning how "being in charge" requires being fair and equitable, as well as taking responsibility.  Example responsibilities for a Patrol Leader would be:

• Verify tasks are done (i.e. tent is clean) before leader inspection

• Lead discussions about decisions the patrol is making (i.e. which badge

• are we going to do, which activities?)

• Report what the group is doing to the leaders

• Remind other patrol members if something is left undone (The Patrol Leader is not responsible for doing it, though.)

Now that the girls are Juniors, they will be responsible for more planning of our activities. We know they’re only in 4th grade. In order to help the girls succeed at planning, we’ll be guiding them and continually putting them in situations where they can succeed. As they get more practice in planning, they will be given even more responsibility.

For example, we selected six badges that we thought the girls, at this age, would be able to plan 6 activities (the number needed to earn a badge). We gave each patrol leader a list of three badges for her patrol to select one from. That way they’re making a decision from a smaller group of possibilities--but they’re still the ones making the decision.

Some badges will be selected by the leaders, and some will be selected by the girls.

We’ve created an activity sheet to assist the girls in the steps they need to consider when planning an activity. After a patrol completes a sheet, a leader will walk through the sheet with the girls and lead them through anything they need to add to their plan.

We wish money wasn't an issue—but it is. The cost of field trips, camping, and badges for a year is about $50 per girl.  We are also saving to go on a larger trip (probably in the summer of 2006).  As long as each girl can do about $50 of fundraising each year (including booth sales), we won't need to charge dues for continuing girls.  If that goal isn't reached, we may have to start charging dues.

Girl Scouts should be fun for the parents as well as for the girls.  As parents, we spend enough time making sure our daughters do the things they have to do—chores, homework, self-hygiene.  We do not want to add Girl Scout activities to the nagging list.

Feel free to remind your daughter a time or two about the badge work she is supposed to do on her own, but if she chooses not to do it, then she chooses not to do it. The natural consequence of not doing an activity will be that she doesn’t complete the badge with the rest of the troop.

Page last edited: 11/26/2006