Celebrating Girl Scouts and its Founder, Juliette Gordon Low
Girl Scout Birthday Month coincides with Women’s History Month, an appropriate pairing. Girl Scouts celebrate the organization’s 102nd birthday today, so it is the perfect time to celebrate their founder, Juliette Gordon Low and her influence on young women for over 100 years.
Juliette Gordon Low, known as Daisy to friends and family, was an active young woman of varied interests and talents. An avid tennis player and swimmer who enjoyed many sports, she also was an artist, sketching, writing poems and even painting. Her legacy, however, is none of those things yet all of them. Juliette Gordon Low’s legacy is the organization for girls she began in Savannah, Georgia on March 12, 1912, called Girl Scouts.
As a young, married woman, Low sought something meaningful to do with her time. She met Sir Robert Baden-Powell who had founded Boys Scouts and Girl Guides and quickly knew the direction of her life. She excitedly called a cousin and said, “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!”
She and her organization encouraged girls to get outdoors to learn self-reliance and to gain experiences beyond traditional homemaking that would prepare them for professional roles with the leadership skills honed in a girl-friendly atmosphere. Low, who was herself hearing impaired, and the Girl Scouts always welcomed even girls with disabilities who were excluded from other organizations. Today, Low’s dream lives on in the hearts of the over 2 million young women members of Girl Scouts. (One could speculate she would be overjoyed at recent efforts to #banbossy to promote female leadership.)
The list of now famous past members of Girl Scouting includes business leaders, sports stars, actresses, astronauts, politicians and more. Some of the more notable Girl Scouts:
Dakota Fanning – Actress
Hillary Clinton – former First Lady, Secretary of State and Senator
Debbi Fields – Founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF (1999-2005)
Rebecca Lobo – WNBA Player
Pat Schoeder – First female Congressional representative from Colorado
Barbara Walters – Host of “The View”
Taylor Swift – Singer
Gloria Steinem – Author
Sandra Day O’Connor – First female Supreme Court Justice
Sally Ride – Astronaut and First Woman in Space
If being a Girl Scout or even a Girl Scout leader has influenced your life and your rise to the top of your game, please share your recollections with our readers by leaving a reply. We would love to hear how Juliette Gordon Low’s vision is still changing women’s lives 102 years later.
Girl Scouts and Juliette Low history from www.GirlScouts.org
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