Last week our local Service Unit sent an email to all Girl Scout leaders asking us to please let new girls into our existing troops. It is sad that there are girls waiting to be placed into a troop. I once answered the call when I first started my troop and out of three girls who needed to be placed, one decided to join and is still with me today.
Photo from Pixabay
Before you decide to take on more girls, you and your co-leader need to sit down and talk about what implications, if any, this will have on your troop. What is the maximum amount of girls you want in your troop? Are the personalities you have now working well? Do you want to upset the apple cart? Will another girl or two put you over the adult/child ratios? Do you have another adult to be a col-leader?
You cannot permit guilt to impact your decision to take on more girls. If your Service Unit tells you that you must, then you can tell them that a bunch more girls will need to find a leader as you will not lead a troop that has more girls that you want. You must always remember that you VOLUNTEERED for this role and you are not obligated to do more than you want to do.
Besides, if a person wants her daughter to be in Girl Scouts, she can step up and volunteer just like you did!
Only your co-leader and you can decide how big is too big for your Girl Scout troop.
i like your blog
Thank you!
There are guidelines about how many girls per volunteer. Moms need to step up if they want their girls to participate. That’s how I got started. All troops were closed so I had to volunteer with another mom in order for our girls to be Daisies this year. I am new to this, and reading lots of material before our first meeting this week!
Juliet-no one wanted to be the leader, so that is how I got the job, too! I hope you find my blog and articles helpful! Good luck!
I’m a new Daisy leader to a brand new Daisy troop in Washington, DC. We have 18 girls in our troop! Four of the girls are homeschooled and the rest go to three different neighborhood schools so not everyone knew each other already. When we put the troop together there was such demand and I had a hard time turning anyone away. Thankfully, I have a great co-leader and fantastic moms who have helped tremendously. In addition to me and my co-leader, we have at least one additional mom and older sister to help at meetings. I’ve sometimes thought that maybe we should split the troop up into two groups, but now that I’ve gotten to know all the girls I can’t imagine doing that because we have too much fun all together. That being said, planning outings is a bit difficult, logistically, but we are in an urban area with lots to do so we take advantage of doing fun things that are within walking distance or public transportation.
Anyway, thanks for writing the blog — I’ll check back often.