Girl Scout leaders desperately needed, being a parent not required

Last week, I read that nationwide Girl Scout numbers are dwindling, that fewer girls are joining up. But when I contacted the Girl Scouts of Western Washington, they said local numbers are up. The problem is there aren’t enough troop leaders. Right now there are 2,600 girls, across 17 counties, on the waiting list to join a troop.

In my experience, the troop leader is a the mom of someone in the troop. But they absolutely don’t have to be. Twelve years ago, when she was 25 years old, Seattle’s Lindsey Sargent responded to a post on Idealist.org, looking for a Girl Scout troop leader in White Center.

“No kids of my own. Wasn’t ever a Girl Scout on my own. But really just thought it would be cool to work with the kids and see what happens.”

She showed up to find 30 rambunctious elementary aged girls at the Boys & Girls Club.

“This troop is really special. It was meant to be programming for girls at the Boys and Girls Club at the point when there wasn’t a lot of programming for girls. They had a lot of clubs for boys, sports for boys. The White Center Boys and Girls Club is in the middle of the Greenbridge housing project. You see a lot of immigrant families, you see a lot of kids in the neighborhood that are on free and reduced lunch, you don’t have high statistics of kids going to college.”

Lindsey rallied her coworker, Liz Coleman, to be her co-leader and they stuck with Troop 1775 until every girl graduated from high school this past June and made sure that every girl went to college.

University of Washington freshman Ema Guzman was in Troop 1775 from 5th grade through her high school graduation. She says she plans on going to med school, wants to join the Peace Corps and says Girl Scouts changed her life.

“My dad went up to fourth grade and my mom went up to her sophomore year of high school,” says Ema. “Both of them have always motivated me to go to college. But they wouldn’t know in which ways to help me and which resources to help me. Girl Scouts, they helped us through applications, through scholarships. They’re like, there’s no question, all of you guys are gonna go to college.”

With Lindsey and Liz’s guidance, the girls went on their first camping trips and hikes, and spent four years selling Girl Scout cookies and crafts to save for a week-long trip to New York City. The girls and their troop leaders became a close-knit family.

“I kind of love that they weren’t our mothers because we see them now as our mothers,” Ema says. “But every one of us has a story of difficulties we’ve gone through at home and it was just kind of a place where we can just forget about everything, or somewhere that we can reach out for help. Our parents aren’t listening. We had this community of women role models. We learned how much women can achieve.”

Lindsey even let two of the girls live with her. One was Ema, whose father kicked her out for not respecting his strict rules, like not allowing her to play sports even though she was earning a 4.0 GPA.

“Lindsey’s like, this door is always open for you here. She had an extra room and I just slept in it. It was really nice because I never had my own room. At one point, we all lived in one room where it was my mom, my dad and my two younger sisters. She was always on top of it as well, with that parental guidance. She was all, ‘You’re doing your work right? Your homework?’ Being that mother figure.”

Lindsey says being a teenager was tough for her so being a troop leader was like redemption. She wanted to have a positive influence on young girls.

“It was such a special time with those kids. It’s such an honor to be in these girls’ lives and see what they’ve gone through and the barriers they’ve had to overcome to get where they are today. It’s amazing. I grew up in Redmond. From the time I was born my parents always said to me, ‘You’re going to college.’ I dreamed up crazy schemes and they’d say, ‘Great, go for it!’ You look at a group of girls who have parents who many of them didn’t graduate high school. Some of them have parents who don’t even root for them. They dream up things in their lives and their parents say, ‘You could never accomplish that. You could never do that.’ To me that’s heartbreaking.”

If being a troop leader is too much commitment, you can still make an impact on a Girl Scout troop by leading a kayaking trip or teaching a skill. And you don’t have to be a parent to do so. Click here for information on how to volunteer.