Forget basket-weaving and bugling. Think resume-crafting and networking.
This week, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles honored four Hermosa Beach teens as “Emerging Leaders,” a select group of girl scouts in grades 10 through 12 that have demonstrated both leadership qualities and dedication to the Girl Scout mission. Mira Costa High School seniors Kelsey Allen, Olivia Brown, Sarah Gustafson and Tera Lloyd have dedicated at least a decade to the scouting program, during which they say they have become more prepared to break down the barriers that women continue to face in the classroom and in the workplace.
In interviews, the honorees described a Girl Scout experience that aided them in ways not popularly understood. The program, they said, has meant so much more than just “cute uniforms and selling cookies.”
“For the first two years, we learned how to sew. After that, my mom made me make phone calls,” she said.
The four honorees said that they have benefited from encouragement to pursue college and career paths that, not so long ago, were considered unusual for women. They now feel more comfortable in the kind of situations required to get there.
“I was very introverted, and I still kind of am. Girl Scouts taught me how send proper emails, how to talk on the phone,” Allen said. “I had a college interview recently, and I still almost had a panic attack. But it was definitely easier than it would have been without this experience. We all know how to communicate with adults.”
The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles is the fifth largest council in the nation, with more than 40,000 total scouts, said Melanie Larsen, communications manager for the greater Los Angeles region. About 100 in the age group were chosen.
“These are girls that exemplify the Girl Scout mission,” Larsen said. “And they’ve demonstrated exemplary leadership through different projects.”
The biggest “project” that most Girl Scouts tackle is their Gold Award, which most scouts complete as they approach 18, and is comparable to the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Scout award.
To receive her Gold Award, Lloyd conducted research on teenage sleep deprivation, created a pamphlet and made presentations to area pre-teens about the tissue, in hopes of educating them before high school, when the problem tends to set in. At first, she said, speaking in public was nerve-wracking. But the experience got easier as she gave more presentations, and she came to see the value in that initial awkwardness.
“It taught me that to be successful, you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone,” Lloyd said.
A similarly enriching experience awaited Gustafson, who for her Gold Award examined the issue of the underrepresentation of women in the “STEM” fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Gustafson, who intends to study biology, said that she has not personally faced the discrimination that can affect women in the sciences. But her project, she said, taught her how important it is to listen and take people’s desires seriously.
“Learning that has given me a good foundation to hear other people’s opinions so that I can accept them,” she said. “In a leadership position, you have to talk to people to get to the best answer.”
Each of the four has been involved in scouting for over a decade, which makes them relatively unusual: most of the peers that they began with left scouting long ago. But with a bit of help from their parents, they said, they stuck with it long enough to see the benefits it could provide.
“In the beginning, I stayed because my parents made me,” Brown said. “But as I grew older, I understood how it would help me in the future.”
