10/10/11

I've spent 4 hours the last 4 Saturdays with an awesome group of Cadettes from Marshfield. This past Saturday at our last session the girls presented me with this gift. I love it! Almost as much as I loved working with this great group of girls.

I started working with some folks from the Girl Scout office on this idea nearly a year ago. Laurie from the Girl Scouts came to me to talk about speaking at a dinner and as we talked she mentioned that they were trying to start "Series" for the older girls to get interested in different career paths. This sparked my interest. I decided that I wanted to do this. I thought it would be fun to teach the girls all about radio. I recruited some great co-workers to help me out in different areas. Cameo a sales rep for one of our sister stations helped out the first day to teach the girls all about sales. Terry Stevens helped out the first session and second session when we taught the girls about commercial copy writing and production and the girls absolutely LOVED him. Emily from our web department helped out when it came time to teach the girls about the relationship between radio and the internet as well as video. And Chris Conley stopped by during the last session to tell the girls about how the news is gathered. 

The original plan was to do 2 hour sessions, but between school starting and my due date there just wasn't going to be enough time. I was a little worried about keeping a group of 11-13 year olds entertained enough to pay attention for 4 hours, but it wasn't bad at all. During the course of the 4 weeks I think the girls had a great time. They created commercials for the girl scouts and a video. 

I had a lot of fun too. I wanted to do this because when I was young I didn't have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout. I was a Brownie, but our leader quit and we had such a small community that there wasn't enough interest to keep it going. I've always admired the organization and as an adult I look at the things that they do and I'm so sad that I didn't get to do these things. I want to make sure that my daughter at least has the opportunity to be a Girl Scout. I hope that I can encourage her to stick with it too. I know when some girls get to be a little older they quit because it not the "cool" thing to do anymore, but if you get a chance to see the things they do it is the REALLY COOL thing to do. GIRL SCOUTS IS MORE THAN JUST COOKIES AND CAMPING.

Once my daughter is old enough to be a Daisy I could see myself volunteering as a leader. Don't hold me to that I'd need a lot of help with my job schedule, but I'd certainly consider it.