As a Girl Scout, Sandra Kennedy wants to create a comic book, finance her dreams and explore the science of happiness.
Luckily, there are badges for that now.
Girl Scouts USA recently unveiled 136 new badges, giving Scouts a new look — and new direction — in the year of its 100th anniversary. Designed to arm girls with modern-day skills, the insignias include everything from Digital Photography and Science of Style to Social Innovator.
Sandra, who is 12, joins thousands of metro Atlanta girls now on a quest to amass new talents — and new badges.
“I like them a whole lot,” said Sandra who lives in Roswell. “I think they are very interesting, and I think it will motivate me.”
Many Scouts are in the process of earning the new badges. Still, you may begin to see some of them as Girl Scouts canvass metro Atlanta selling cookies.
The annual cookie season kicked off earlier this month and continues through March. The tradition is thriving here, where the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta count is close to 42,000 Girl Scouts in 34 counties.
Beth Messer, director of Girl Leadership Experience with the Atlanta region, said the new badges are designed to reflect girls’ evolving interests and the importance of technology and finance in today’s culture. A major update was also long overdue, she said. The last time the badges were overhauled was 1987.
A business strategy consultant and focus groups helped develop the badges. In focus groups, girls asked for more challenge, creativity, technology and “fun with purpose,” according to Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman with Girl Scouts USA.
Financial literacy is a major theme. Brownies can earn Money Manager badges; Junior Girl Scouts can obtain Savvy Shopper badges; and middle school Cadettes can try for Budgeting and Marketing badges.
According to a 2011 survey by T. Rowe Price, three-fourths of parents believe they should begin conversations about finances with their children before age 10.
Messer said the Girl Scouts believe teaching financial skills to elementary-age girls can help establish lifelong money-management skills.
The new badges also deal with other critical life skills that weren’t around when Juliette Gordon Low started the movement 100 years ago, such as learning how to apply good manners on the Web.
While Brownies can get a badge for Making Friends, middle schoolers can earn a badge for Netiquette.
In general, Scouts need to complete several steps for each badge. To obtain the Netiquette badge, for example, Girl Scouts need to explore how to avoid “oops” moments and feelings of regret over hitting the send button and determine what makes a great social media profile.
Badges familiar to an earlier generation of Scouts, meanwhile, have taken their bow. Gone is the sewing badge. The food fibers and farming badge also got the boot. A handful of the yesteryear badges, now called Legacy badges, will stick around, including ones for First Aid, Cooking and the Girl Scout Way.
The new badges also exude a hip look. The pale orange Room Makeover badge features a paint brush and hammer.
Girl Scouts earn between eight and 10 badges every year on average. They also can design their own badge. They can develop a template for the five steps to earn the badge and design the look of the badge by going to www.gsmakeyourown. com after it goes live next month.
Besides the new badges, the Girl Scouts have also introduced a program of “leadership journeys” in which Girl Scouts will engage in activities around themes such as the environment, advocacy and self-esteem building.
But one constant remains: selling cookies. This year, there will be a centennial lemon cookie called Savannah Smiles, named to honor Low. “It’s a great product,” Messer said. “People like to eat the cookies and it’s a great cause because when people buy Thin Mints from a Girl Scout, yes they want their Thin Mints, but they look at the Girl Scout selling the cookies and see that this is a program worth supporting.”
This year the Scouts of Greater Atlanta expect to sell 4.3 million boxes of cookies and raise $15 million.
Sandra started selling cookies last Monday and sold 44 boxes her first day. She’s interested in selling more cookies, but she’s also interested in something else: those new badges.
“I think because of these new badges, I will be a Girl Scout longer,” she said.
Sandra recently started drawing a comic story, sketching two flying creatures vying for a prized gemstone.
She’s one step closer to getting her own prize: the badge for Comic Artist.
Book review
“Juliette Gordon Low — The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts” by Stacy A. Cordery, Viking, 365 pages, $27.95
This new biography tells the story of the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low. Born in Savannah at the end of the Civil War, she struggled to reconcile the expectations of being a good Southern belle with her affinity for running barefoot through the field all day. Low married a British aristocrat, but the couple was separated at the time of her husband’s death in 1905. Low yearned for a sense of purpose. In 1911, she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and Low, fascinated by the Boy Scouts program, knew then what to do with her life. She returned to Savannah and started a grassroots movement, which developed into the Girl Scouts. Cordery quotes Low explaining the Girl Scouts in 1916: “Our purposes are analogous to those of the Boy Scouts. They aim to make better men, we to make better women. They are made better housewives if they are to remain in the home, for they are taught practical and useful things, or if they have to go out in the world, they will learn self-reliance as well as being helped to a means of livelihood.”
