Our Promise, September 2021

September 2021

OUR PROMISE In today’s complicated world, Girl Scouts is an essential force in girls’ lives. We are a vital experience that grows and expands alongside them as they get older, discover the world around them and realize their dreams. I am incredibly grateful to welcome girls to Girl Scouts and press play on a new, exciting membership year! in understanding and dealing with aggression while teaching healthy relationship skills to create school and community environments to help students feel respected and valued.

This fall, whether they are making a new friend, using their STEM skills to solve a problem, or discovering the power of spreading kindness, all of their actions within Girl Scouts add up to a better world for us all. We are committed to continue creating an environment where girls explore freely, expand their perspectives and discover the unimaginable. As a loyal donor, you play a critical role in making it all happen. Thank you for helping eastern Missouri Girl Scouts realize their untapped potential!

In this issue of Our Promise , we will highlight many of the ways Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri continue to provide the best leadership development program. To help girls explore their unfound ambitions, Girl Scouts released 28 new badges that embolden girls to navigate a changing society. The popular Live from Girl Scouts program series is coming back for season three for families who prefer virtual options and where girls can earn many of the new badges from home. Girls will also have ample opportunities to discover new passions and connect with their peers with in-person programming at the Berges Family Girl Scout Program Center. As girls head back to school, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri is delivering the Project Anti-Violence Education (PAVE) program in many classrooms. This specialized curriculum educates, empowers and assists youth

Yours in Girl Scouting,

Bonnie Barczykowski CEO, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri

28 New Reasons to Be a Girl Scout New Girl Scout badges embolden girls to navigate and succeed in a quickly-changing world.

T hey’re here: 28 new ways for Girl Scouts of all ages to explore their world, whether online or unplugged! Amid seismic shifts in technology and culture brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Girl Scouts can now earn badges—in addition to the hundreds of existing badges—that address girls’ evolving interests in ways that resonate with them. The badges also address some of parents’ top concerns for their children as they handle the increasingly digital world, helping girls build confidence and safe practices online.

The newest class of badges take on even more topics that Girl Scouts and their families care about, like getting outside, using technology to run girls’ cookie businesses and growing girls’ digital leadership skills to make the world a better place. The new Girl Scout badges include: Math in Nature (grades K–5): Despite increased remote learning, not all learning happens indoors. This badge gets girls outdoors to explore and conserve the natural world as they learn math concepts. Cookie Business (grades K–12): With businesses shifting their models and relying even more on technology, girls learn to think beyond the storefront. The new Cookie Business badges help girls think like entrepreneurs as they run their own cookie businesses and incorporate online sales via the Digital Cookie® platform. Digital Leadership (grades K–12): Digital well- being is here to stay. Girl Scouts explore what a leader is, both online and in their everyday lives. They learn how to be online in a responsible and safe way, and dive into topics like managing your well-being online, how to balance your time on and offline, and how to deal with issues like misinformation, clickbait and biases in advertising. Girls across eastern Missouri are kicking off their new Girl Scout membership and school year by registering for programs that reflect this new badge work. These Girl Scouts will explore new ambitions and tackle new challenges in-person at the Berges Family Girl Scout Program Center, virtually through Live From Girl Scouts and with assistance from our more than 150 local, expert program collaborators.

Celebrating Girl Ambition

Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri’s 2020 and 2021 Highest Awardees were honored this summer with a hybrid Reflections event commemorating their extraordinary achievements.

On June 12, 2021, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri honored hundreds of remarkable young change-makers who earned their Bronze, Silver or Gold Award at the Reflections Ceremony. This hybrid event invited 2020 and 2021 girls who earned their highest awards to attend in-person or virtually.

Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri awarded 60 girls with the Girl Scout Gold Award, 392 with the Girl Scout Silver Award and 761 with the Girl Scout Bronze Award, representing over 35,000 hours of community service! Girls attending in-person walked across the stage at the Berges Family Girl Scout Program Center while their families watched the live stream.

Two outstanding Gold Award Girl Scouts who were honored at the 2021 Reflections Ceremony were Navya Bhagat and Erin Lambert. These young women and their fellow Gold Award Girl Scouts joined an elite group of leaders affecting positive change in the world. Gold Awardees: Creating a Brighter Future for Us All

Navya Bhagat Navya knew she wanted to take action and do her part to combat the environmental crisis to earn the Gold Award. This young change-maker decided to promote ecological sustainability by building a compost bin and installing her project at Mallinckrodt Elementary. Navya created a presentation and lesson plans to implement the compost tumbler into the curriculum. Navya also started an online second-hand clothing store to raise funds and benefit the environment by reducing waste.

Erin Lambert After personally experiencing the effect Alzheimer’s has on loved ones, Erin knew she wanted to do her part to help those in similar situations to earn her Gold Award. Erin led her team to sew 30 fidget blankets. These blankets provide comfort and occupy patients of Alzheimer’s while giving the caretakers room to perform other tasks. When Erin finished making the blankets, she donated them to Avalon Memory Care. Erin has instructed the CARE Club at her high school on how to sew the fidget blankets, and they have committed to continue Erin’s project in the future.

Scan the QR code to learn more about the Girl Scout Gold Award journey!

PAVE Inside (and Outside) the Classroom

Each year, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri serves thousands of youth through community outreach programs. Primarily delivered in schools, outreach programs provide youth with leadership and life skills while promoting positive culture in the communities where they live.

For more than 20 years, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri has delivered its Project Anti-Violence Education (PAVE) program to tens of thousands of students in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout eastern Missouri. The goal of this program is: advocate for positive mental health practices from an early age and give students a safe space and the communication tools necessary to discuss their experiences with bullying, peer pressure and violence. The interactive curriculum has been embraced by students and school administration alike. Year after year, PAVE’s outreach has steadily grown as the topics of mental health and social emotional intelligence surge to the forefront of adolescent education. 2020-2021 was a milestone year for PAVE and Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri’s approach to building strong, emotionally healthy and communicative female leaders. Local educators and Girl Scout staff saw the opportunity to increase and improve equity with the PAVE program by addressing the fundamentally different social and emotional issues facing students in urban, suburban and rural environments. Seeking the guidance of renowned experts in the field, Girl Scouts conducted a comprehensive PAVE curriculum rewrite. The resulting curriculum is comprised of three parts: 1. DISCOVER lessons focus on understanding emotions and feelings and how to regulate them; 2. CONNECT lessons allow students to strengthen their “empathy muscle,” and 3. TAKE ACTION lessons encourage student to speak up for themselves while also actively listening to others. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed Girls Scouts to simultaneously look at alternate ways to deliver PAVE “in” the classroom. The outcome of those discussions allowed teachers to choose their preferred method of delivery: 1). Live/Virtual presentations, 2). Pre-recorded sessions that could be integrated into the classroom schedule at the teacher’s discretion, or 3). A combination of live/virtual and pre-recorded. PAVE instructors work with school representatives to determine a delivery method and schedule for each individual classroom.

Amidst a global pandemic, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri was able to reach an astonishing 14,081 students throughout eastern Missouri during this last school year. Moving forward, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri anticipates greater outreach within the counties where PAVE already has a presence, as well as an increase in its collaborations with schools throughout the eastern Missouri region. If you know a school or teacher that would be interested in bringing PAVE to their classroom, please contact Lisa Beasley, Director of Membership, at lbeasley@girlscoutsem.org . “The students are able to mediate some of the issues themselves by using empathy. This was an awesome delivery of this program. It worked well with the situation we currently have going on in the world right now.”

- Meramec Elementary Teacher

Spotlight on the Jefferson Foundation Girl Scouts’ Project Anti-Violence Education program has evolved in recent years and soared to new heights. This success is especially noteworthy in Jefferson County, where the long-time support of the Jefferson Foundation is bringing PAVE to classrooms in powerful numbers. Since 2013, the Jefferson Foundation has provided support for charitable and educational activities that promote individual and community health and well-being in Jefferson County. Since its formation, the Foundation has distributed more than $7 million in grants in support of services for its Jefferson County residents that include, but are not limited to, the provision of food and other basic needs, basic dental services for youth, substance abuse prevention programs, health-related education, homeless and domestic violence services, mental health counseling, transportation and much more. The Foundation’s more than $150,000 cumulative investment in PAVE demonstrates its commitment to the mental well- being of its younger population. This multi-year collaboration has brought, to date, critical anti-violence programming to more than 13,500 Jefferson County youth, not to mention the groundbreaking Girl Scout Leadership Experience to more than 7,000 girls. Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri is proud to call the Jefferson Foundation its partner and looks forward to continued collaboration that allows for the ongoing expansion of the program in Jefferson County, MO.

2021 TUF Scholarship Honoree Leola Poe, a McKinley Classical Leadership Academy graduate, is the 2021 recipient of Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri’s $1,000 Transform UR Future (TUF) Scholarship for higher education. Through TUF, high schools partner with an elementary and middle school in their district to provide peer-facilitation PAVE programming. Leola demonstrated extraordinary leadership by leading efforts to provide virtual programming to Sigel Elementary during the 2020 school year. This fall, Leola will attend Southeast Missouri University and plans to study multimedia journalism. As a TUF peer leader, Leola gained the understanding of patience, confidence and never underestimating yourself while spreading those traits to the younger generations. “Girl Scouts has helped me become more confident, open-minded and a better leader,” Leola said. “Being able to try new things, interact with new people and being able to achieve a new level of understanding others’ situations is what Girl Scouts helped me achieve.”

Since its inception, PAVE has reached students throughout St. Louis city and county, as well as Warren, Jefferson, Marion, Pike, Ste. Genevieve and Washington counties.

A Summer to Remember Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri was thrilled to welcome our girls, families and troops back to camp in 2021! From equestrian to archery and canoeing to crafts, it was a summer well-spent building leadership skills in the great outdoors.

2,196 Eastern Missouri Girl Scouts Attended Resident Camp during Summer 2021

Thank You, Ameren Missouri! Thank you to Ameren Missouri for their generous donation of cots, pillows, blankets, sheets and towels

for use at our three camping properties. Thousands of girls and volunteers will utilize these essential items during their Resident and Troop Camp experiences.

Girl Scouts GO is Back! The sweetest race in eastern Missouri will be back in-person this November! Once again, supporters can join us for a 5K or 1-mile run/walk or participate in our virtual event option.

In-Person Event – Sat., Nov. 27 5K or 1-mile Run/Walk Girl Scout Service Center 2300 Ball Dr., St. Louis 63146 To limit the gathering of participants at the start line we will offer multiple start times for both the 5K and 1-mile options. 5K waves will begin at 8 am and 1-mile waves will begin at 9 am. Packet pick-up information can be found on the event registration page, ffstl.com/girlscouts . Virtual Event – Nov. 19-28 Whether you want to run on the treadmill, jog around the neighborhood or walk a local trail, our virtual event is a great option to participate in our annual event. Grab your family and friends for a 5K or 1-mile run or walk anytime from Nov. 19-28. Race packets will be mailed to all virtual participants. Shipping is included in your registration fee. Register by November 8 to guarantee packet delivery by November 26. Event Sponsorships Available Sponsorships are available to support this fun event! Visit girlscoutsem.org/girlscoutsgo for more information.

Registration Visit ffstl.com/girlscouts to register online. Registration is required for both the in-person and virtual event options. Registration is open now through Nov. 27. Register by Oct. 11 to lock in a lower price and guarantee your T-shirt size. More information on swag options and deadlines can be found on the registration page. Registration Fees • $25 (5K) or $15 (1-mile) through Oct. 11 • $30 (5K) or $18 (1-mile) through Nov. 8 • $35 (5K) or $20 (1-mile) through Nov. 27

Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri 2300 Ball Dr. St. Louis, MO 63146 314.592.2300 800.727.GIRL (4475)