Rethinking a Girlhood Tradition
By conventional teen-age wisdom, standing in front of a supermarket hawking chocolate mint cookies is definitely uncool. So is wearing a uniform. Or spending countless hours trying to earn little cloth badges.
Maybe that’s why some image-hyper girls shy away from Girl Scouts--the childhood training ground of their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generations. Who wants to be labeled (gulp!) uncool? And adults might wonder if an organization founded in 1912 can have any relevance for girls in the ‘90s.
But about 2 million girls in the U.S. do belong to Girl Scouts--more than 7,500 in the San Fernando Valley alone. And they know the truth behind the cookie-selling, neckerchief-wearing image: Scouting really is much more than that.
One day recently, a group of Scouts and future Scouts got together for their weekly meeting at a housing complex in Pacoima. “OK, what do we do after the Pledge of Allegiance?” asked Mara Barraza-Cordeiro, a troop leader.
The girls raised three fingers of their right hands and spoke in unison the words that have been uttered for 83 years.
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law
Tarayla Crawford said the Girl Scout promise loud and clear, her voice rising above the other girls.
Tarayla’s decision to be a Girl Scout is bred in a candid pragmatism--for now it’s the best thing going. This day Tarayla draws and plays “seaweed tag” with 12 other girls on a large lawn at the Van Nuys Pierce Park Apartments, a low-income housing complex.
Through Scouting she has earned merit badges and gone to museums and the Imax Theater and made new friends. So what would she tell girls who might be hesitant to come to a meeting?
She’d tell them they “don’t do nothing except sit inside or go outside with your boyfriend anyway,” she says knowingly. “You’re missing out on something good.”
For now Tarayla is an easy sell. She wants to be involved and has the encouragement of her mother, who was never a Scout but wanted Tarayla to have the experience.
It gets harder as girls get older.
In the fall, Katrina will start high school. A member of a Northridge-based troop, Katrina said that sometimes people just don’t understand Scouting.
“They say, like, ‘Why are you still in Girl Scouts? That’s for babies,’ ” she said. “They think it’s a waste of time and they could be talking on the phone or something like that.”
But Katrina sees things differently.
“It will help them to have a better lifestyle, to build character, and to try and be somebody.”
These days the Scouts compete with boyfriends, cheerleading practice, organized sports, and other extracurricular activities--not all of which are as wholesome.
Be prepared is the age-old motto of the Scouts, boy and girl, but girls growing up in Los Angeles today must be prepared for much more than Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts, ever could have imagined.
The girls at the public housing complex in Pacoima are part of what the council calls a non-traditional troop. They meet only in the summer, when the council can afford to supply a paid staff member to help run the troop. Aside from a small fee, the activities are free. The goal is to introduce Scouting to girls who otherwise might not have the opportunity due to poverty or language and cultural barriers.
Some of the girls come from immigrant families. “We have parents who haven’t even heard of Girl Scouts,” Barraza-Cordeiro said.
And it has become increasingly important, once the girls have been reached, to give them what they need--especially the older ones.
“We really try to work with them on a lot of the contemporary issues, things that will really affect them--like teen-age pregnancy and substance abuse,” said Yumiko Carr, Valley Girl Scouts spokeswoman. “At least give them skills so that they can make decisions about their lives.”
Gwendolyn Erby is co-leader of a traditional troop in Pacoima. Her daughter started in sixth grade and continued through her teen-age years, and eventually became a Brownie leader.
Over the years, Erby has taught the girls things that are in the official Scouting manual and some that have come from her own life experiences. After watching the way the girls walked with bowed heads, with adolescent self-consciousness, she gave them a lesson on body language and pride.
“Put your shoulders back, put your head up and look a person in the eye,” Erby told the girls. “You have to walk with a positive attitude and let people know, ‘I’m proud of who I am.’ ”
And while she knows the girls sometimes face questions from friends about Scouting, she helps with the answers: The girls have fun, and they don’t have to wear uniforms all the time.
“They get to wear jeans and T-shirts and their Daisy Duke shorts too,” she said with a laugh.
The proof of the Scouts’ relevance may lie in the work of the girls themselves. This year, eight San Fernando Valley girls received a Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouting. The award is equal to achieving Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts--only, for some strange reason, few people outside of Girl Scouts seem to know about it. The culmination of a long list of requirements for the award is successful completion of a project designed and implemented by the Scout.
Nimra Gardley, a 17-year-old Cleveland High School graduate, organized an African Culture Day for Junior Scouts.
“I wanted something that reflected my culture,” said Nimra, who was often the only African American in a troop.
Celese Gil organized a food drive and soup kitchen for the homeless. Shana Rapoport planned a beautification day for Sepulveda Dam Basin. Michele Chicca planted 125 trees for Earth Day at the Scouts’ Camp Lakota near Frazier Park. Amy McGilvray organized girls to make and decorate quilts for patients at the City of Hope and the pediatric AIDS center at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Woodland Hills. Erin Turner taught art and music to younger girls. Amy Crawford taught girls camping skills. Brigette Tamusaitis presented a workshop on domestic abuse.
These are real-life issues, not cookies and stuffy uniforms. All of them can teach any girl, and anybody, poignant lessons about life.
Which is pretty cool.
