Juniors - keeping their interest for Cadettes - part II

Our last post left off with the question, "What else could you do to keep the girls engaged in Cadettes?"  

You're a Junior leader, and you're looking forward, to when the girls bridge into Cadetttes.  Perhaps you're asking yourself if you've done Juniors right!?  Have the girls made steps to lead the meetings?  Plan the overnights? Make their own decisions?  Choose their service projects? Execute a Bronze Award Project?  If your answer is "yes" to all those questions, kudos to you and your adult leadership for bringing the girls along so well in the GS Leadership Essentials Program!!!  Your girls are prime for Cadettes.  They might just not know it yet!

One of the best things about Cadettes for the girls is that THEY MAKE THE CHOICES!  They get to use the leadership skills that they've been developing all these years and steer their own course.  The girls need to know this, and you need to tell them AND their parents.  The girls take in the money, write the checks and keep tabs on the budget, with adult supervision, assuredly.  The girl gets to have her own ledger account of cookie money to fund her GS experience.  That's music to the ears of the high achievers, to be sure!  

As we say in training, these Cadette girls want to be in charge, and they want to be told the sky's the limit!  If they work hard, do their due diligence, they can achieve anything!!  Small steps to take in Cadettes include leadership in Day Camps, participating in destinations, being a Lookie Lou at GAM, and then completing a Journey and determining their own Silver Award Projects.  Plus having the opportunity to have a leadership role with in the troop is a big deal.  If your troop is large enough, the girls can experience troop government in patrols or with a Court of Honor.  All these great things are in front of them, and they need to know it!

But what if they "know it" or at least have been exposed to it, but are still thinking they might not have time for Girl Scout's monthly meetings or camping or Award and Journey work?  Well, Barb Christenson rightfully says, this is the time to be flexible!

"I think the key word for working with older Girl Scouts is flexibility.  We advisors need to be able to change how we run meetings to fit what the girls want.  We need to make the meetings look different from what they have been doing for the past six years.  (I often compare Daisy and Brownie meetings to birthday parties – craft, song or game, activity and a snack and also planned by the adults.)  We changed our meeting date, place and time to give it a different feel; instead of Friday afternoons right after school, which everyone knows isn’t going to work once they get to high school, we started meeting on Sunday evenings and included dinner.  I do know that half our Cadette meetings the first year looked a lot like an evening at the nail salon with a lot of chit chat, nail painting, and not a lot of anything going on.  But, that may be exactly what the girls need their first year!  Many of these girls are over-programmed with sports, church/temple, homework, and whatever else they participate in.  Granted, their parents may not see the value in that, but the bonding between the girls is priceless!

Because of the girls’ busy schedules and their many interests, advisors need to be willing to be flexible about how girls participate in the troop.  Establish what this flexibility looks like.  For example, I had girls who only wanted to participate in day camp; I never saw them at troop meetings so I didn’t charge them any dues and I kept them informed about day camp meetings and annual renewal dates.  I also had a couple of girls who only wanted to earn their higher awards; they would come to meetings when we worked on pre-requisites, and once those were completed, I would only see them at Silver/Gold meetings.  I did charge them dues for the years that they were attending the troop meetings.  Lastly, I had girls who only wanted to travel so they would come to the travel meetings.  Did that take more time for us, the advisors?  Absolutely, because we were basically running meetings every week (two troop meetings, a travel meeting, and a Silver/Gold meeting) but it was well worth it and it only happened one year in Cadettes and one year in Seniors.