Girl Scouts celebrate 100 years of service

In celebration of the Girl Scouts’ 100th birthday, Columbia Falls Service Unit Manager Naureen Sago organized a party centered around the girls earning the 100-year council badge offered through the Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming.

“They had a blast,” Naureen said with a smile. “We made 100 cupcakes, and they sang happy birthday to Girl Scouts and blew out 100 candles.”

Girls from troops in the greater Columbia Falls area learned vintage skills like napkin folding and old-time fun such as kite-making and playing marbles and jacks.

“It was kind of what they were doing in the 1920s,” she said. “There weren’t all the computer games and TV back then.”

But as with most Girl Scout activities, the party included up-to-date learning experiences. Sago said the Montana/Wyoming council had issued a challenge for March for girls to see how much they could recycle.

At the party, Sago dumped out a huge bag of “trash,” including tin and aluminum cans, glass, paper, cardboard, plastic detergent bottles and more. She put the girls to work sorting it out.

“They ended up with just a grocery bag of what they needed to throw away,” she said.

Sago, her service unit and others in the Flathead Valley represent a microcosm of 3.2 million members and 50 million alumnae commemorating March 12, 1912.

On that day, Juliette Gordon Low organized the first U.S. Girl Guide troop in Savannah, Ga., with 18 members divided into two patrols named Carnation and White Rose.

Girl Scouts of the United States of America centennial celebrations will continue through 2012, declared the “Year of the Girl” in recognition of their leadership potential and with a commitment to build coalitions with similar organizations to foster “balanced leadership” in the workplace and communities across the nation.

Sally Leep, chief executive officer of the Montana/Wyoming council, said the organization has been resilient while remaining faithful to Low’s vision of a safe and supportive environment in which girls develop courage, confidence and character to become leaders.

“Since 1912, Girl Scouting has built its success on a deep commitment to  timeless values,” Leep said.

For Sago, the mother of three daughters who achieved Girl Scouts’ lofty Gold Award, as well as others in Montana, these 100th year celebrations became slightly bittersweet with the potential loss of the state lease for Camp Westana. Using an updated appraisal of the camp, the state raised the annual lease from $5,000 to a cost-prohibitive $25,000 a year.

Each of Sago’s daughters — Cassandra, 22; Deirdra, 19; and Kendra, 17 — put in 65 or more hours making improvements at the camp to earn their Gold Awards. Deirdra, now a community college student, and Kendra, a junior at Columbia Falls High School, worked on the camp last summer.

Deirdra  worked on the main lodge fixing windows, painting the walls and installing a new dish cupboard and wash station. Kendra worked at Camp Westana at the same time.

“I worked on these three-sided cabins in one of the little sections that they have, the Adriondacks,” she said.

“Those were a lot of fun. We extended the floor about three feet so you could pull the bunk beds out and built railings on the top bunk.”

Kendra, Deirdra and their friends ended up putting in more than 80 hours each in visits from June to August.

Both young women credit Girl Scouts with making a profound difference in their lives.

Kendra, now considering a career in pediatric nursing, said she wouldn’t have looked at that option without scouting, where she learned to love interacting with young children. Deirdra decided to aim for a career counseling troubled teens.

One of the few older girls in Scouts in later years, Deirdra said Girl Scouts developed her natural ability to lead others.

“I probably wouldn’t have had exposure to leading and to as many people without Girl Scouts,” she said

Cassandra, away at college, graduates from the University of Idaho in May. Her mother said she aspires to become a veterinarian.

She was the first daughter Sago started in the Girl Scouts organization. Cassandra became a Brownie in the first grade, and Sago became a parent helper.

“My son, my oldest, was in Boy Scouts,” Sago said.

“A letter came home from school about Girl Scouts. I said, ‘Oh sure, we’ll give it a shot and see what happens.’”

What happened was a career edging toward two decades of volunteering, from starting as a parent helper for about five years and then progressing to co-leader, leader and unit manager for the greater area of Columbia Falls, which serves about 70 girls.

“Deirdra was in the first grade, and I became her troop leader all the way through from first grade through senior in high school,” Sago said. “I liked being able to spend time with my kids, doing extra things with them that I didn’t get a chance to do regularly.”

Sago admits she had a lot of learning to do along the way and that she had as much or more fun doing some of the activities. Sago recalled the puppet badge Deirdra’s troop worked on in the first or second grade.

“I took some cloth gloves and made puppets out of them. You had five fingers and different people on each fingers,” she said.

“I had so much fun with that. I don’t know if they had as much fun as I did, but I had a blast.”

Deirdra said she didn’t remember that but the many trips she and her sister and mom took through scouting remain very  exciting memories. She and Kendra recalled Hands-Across-the-Border gatherings in Canada and Nite Treks.

“Those were amazing opportunities for girls,” Naureen said.

Locally they enjoyed overnight events called Lock-ins that brought all the girls in a service unit together. Sago said she had sixth- and seventh-graders choose the theme and plan six stations that the girls rotated through.

“This year the girls wanted to do something with animals, so we did animal stuff,” she said.

“We did masks of any animal they wanted. We did track identification. We made animals out of clay, and we did scat identification.”

Both Kendra and Deirdra said those gatherings with so many different people and age groups helped them develop planning and leadership skills. Deirdra said they had to have activities with different levels of difficulty or encourage the older girls to help the younger ones

“Boy Scouts are really good at making all the age groups bond,” she said.

“Girl Scouts, since troops are by grade, we only have a few opportunities to encourage that kind of growth. Plus, the younger girls can see the older girls do continue [in Girl Scouts], and it is OK to go on.”

“And it’s fun,” Kendra added.

Kendra and Deirdra point to the drop-out rate as girls hit high school as the biggest challenge in Girl Scouts. They found themselves alone as Ambassadors, grades 11 and 12, as former scout friends left for sports and other high school activities.

Sago said she believes Columbia Falls remains the only unit with Ambassadors.

“We’re the only ones who are cool enough,” Deirdra said with a laugh.

Although some people expressed amazement that the girls remained in Girl Scouts in high school, Kendra and Deirdra have no regrets. They say they gained “a really great relationship” with their mother, each other and so much more.

They laugh together, remembering Sago facing her terror of heights on one trip and leaving her comfort zone to tackle public transportation on another. They giggle as Deirdra waves one of her not-so-crafty projects.

“A lot of people think Girl Scouts is just arts and crafts. When you do those things, that’s kind of what you think,” Kendra said. “But when you look back on that, you realize Girl Scouts is a lot more. You learn a lot if you actually want to.”

With the 100th anniversary, Girl Scouts has reformatted effective this year. Sago said the books have been redone with a new emphasis on girls leading instead of being led.

Girl Scouts remains the same basic program but with upgrades making the venerable organization still relevant in an computer and electronic age when girls face no limits.

“We’ve rebooted,” Deirdra said.

For more information, check the Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming at www.gsmw.org.

 Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.