Why Girl Scouting
Girl Scouting is a comprehensive, informal education program accessible to all girls in the United States, ages 5 through 17 years. Today, the Girl Scout Movement encompasses nearly three million girls and adults and remains in the vanguard of youth movements, anticipating the needs of girls and designing innovative programs to answer those needs. The Girl Scout Movement in the United States is for girls. Juliette Low might not have predicted its size, but she would undoubtedly applaud this description of the organization she founded in 1912. She began the organization to allow young girls to experience the challenges, the adventures, and the special educational opportunities that were not provided by other societal institutions of her day. Historically, Girl Scouting is defined as an organization for girls. Its mission -- to serve the needs and interests of girls -- is stated in the Constitution itself, made explicit in the Girl Scout Congressional Charter, and serves as the ideal goal for all organizational planning.
The Girl Scout organization throughout the United States has always stressed the development of a positive self-image and leadership skills for girls. It has always offered capable, resourceful, and self-reliant women as role models for girls. The continuation of those emphases, however, is based less on tradition or on reaction to a sometimes imprecise public image, than on an understanding of today's challenge: To build a stronger role for girls and for the women they will become, in a society that retains built-in and often subtle barriers to the achievement of this goal.
In a Girl Scout setting, these barriers are broken. With others of her own sex and guided by female adults, a Girl Scout draws from a learning environment that recognizes her contribution, her value, and her abilities. Through Girl Scouting, a girl can reach her full potential, can develop sound values, arid can experience the challenge of being a leader in a caring environment. After all, Girl Scouting is for girls.