“I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America.”
We all know someone or we WERE that someone who was a Girl Scout. There is a reason this program carries such prestige and legacy, and that reason is Juliette Gordon Low. During the early 1900s through sheer determination, passion, and the belief in the potential of girls, she established a movement that would change the world.
The Birth of Girl Scouts
Low was inspired by the founder of the Boy Scouts, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. She admired the structure of the Boy Scouts program and foresaw how beneficial that same structure could be for young women. She wanted to establish a program that nurtured growth, self-sufficiency, and respect within girls. On March 12, 1912, Juliette Gordon Low organized the first troop meeting of 18 girls at her home in Savannah, Georgia. She was determined to make Girl Scouts a safe haven that inspired and empowered girls from all different backgrounds and ethnicities. Her unconventional inclusion of diversity, despite the societal norms of 1912, immediately established her as a woman beyond her time.
Nurturing Her “Girl Led” Global Movement
Like all movements, Low had to raise money to sustain Girl Scouts. She worked with the American Red Cross and recruited and encouraged the scouts to get involved in the war effort. Girl Scouts would roll bandages, plant gardens, canned foods, and sell war bonds to help aid their country. Eventually, the program needed a fundraiser that was their “own”. In 1917, the legendary girl scout cookie was born. First sold in the school cafeterias of Muskogee Oklahoma… Now? An estimated 200 million boxes of cookies are sold each year, worldwide. The Girl Scout cookie has developed into a symbol of the organization itself, bringing joy to its customers and empowerment to the scouts themselves. The Girl Scout Cookie fundraiser provides basic financial and business skills for girls and provides them with a goal-oriented structure for a good cause.
Now vs. Then
Girls Scouts have come a long way since its humble beginnings, to say the least. An organization that started with 18 girls in Low’s home, has since grown to over 3 million members. The program boasts an impressive lineage of alumnae including but not limited to Hillary Clinton, Taylor Swift, Sally Ride, Venus Williams, Grace Kelly and Condolezza Rice. It is no secret that the program has raised an empowered generation of warrior women. Low passed away almost a century ago, and yet her legacy lives on. She has received multiple honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2012. Her vision lives on in the troops of young girls who will grow into troops of influential women.
