Girl Scouts Team Up with FIRST

I was delighted that one of the BIG announcements at this year’s FIRST Championship was a new partnership between the Girl Scouts of America and FIRST. Every Girl Scout troop will now be supported and encouraged to form a robotics team. The young women on the Girl Scout’s existing teams will be tapped as mentors. There are already close to 100 Girl Scout FIRST LEGO League programs around the country to date. Two high-school-level Girl Scout teams competed in the World Championship finals in Atlanta.

Emily Tweaks Her Team’s Robot

Photo by Akill11, Flickr

Emily Stephens, a senior at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis, tweaks the team's robot at the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition—the team was a finalist for the Autodesk Inventor award.

 

Bottoms-Up Demand for more STEM Activities. It’s interesting to note that this is not a top-down, adult-initiated partnership. It’s more of a bottoms-up, girl-demanded activity. Many of the young women who are active in scouting come from inner cities as well as from affluent suburbs. They see science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) as disciplines in which they are under-represented and under-mentored. They look to their scouting programs to provide the much-needed exposure to these activities in a “safe” all-girls environment. The founder of the Girl Scouts was an environmentalist, inventor, and aviator. The Girls Scouts have had engineering and scientific merit badges since their inception. But the demand for more active STEM programming is increasing. One of the more popular programs since 2001 has been the Design and Discovery program, in which girls have the opportunity to “learn by doing”—working on their own engineering and design projects with mentoring by engineering and design professionals. Now, with the FIRST partnership and additional corporate sponsorships (from supporters like LEGO, etc.), more girls will have the opportunity to discover competencies and talents in science, engineering, programming, math, and other related areas. As Kate Pickle, one of the program managers for the Girl Scouts’ STEM program told the Visionaries, “Women represent 46% of the total workforce but only 12 to 15% of the technology workforce. Early interest in science, math, technology, and engineering is critical to girls' success in these subjects.”

One of the things the Visionaries discussed in relation to the Girl Scouts is the brand image that many of us (particularly men who haven’t ever experienced the program) have about the Girls Scouts. “To us, you’re cookies and camping,” one guy admitted. It’s great to hear that you’re really thinking “out of the box!” So, bottom line, if you have daughters who aren’t currently involved in their local Girls Scouts activities, check out the options and make sure that their troop takes advantage of the FIRST partnership. 

Comments

[Patty Seybold]

Todd,
Thanks for your question. I'm sure others have the same reaction...The partnership between FIRST and the Girl Scouts is still being executed. And from the Girl Scouts' perspective, they want the "pull" to come from the local Girl Scout Councils rather than having the program foisted on them by the National organization. There's some Web site development going on on both sides which will take a while to update.. I recommended that they simply do a FIRST/GIRL Scouts Resources blog/wiki...as a way to get things going.. (volunteers are welcome to help!)

The link which formally describes the relationship can be found here: http://www.girlscouts.org/news/news_releases/2008/first_partnership.asp

If you would like to learn more about starting a FIRST team at any age level, contact Suman Sabastin at Girl Scouts of the USA [email protected]. Resources are currently being produced for those who wish to start new teams and an official GSUSA-FIRST participation patch is also being designed for any Girl Scouts that are on any existing FIRST teams, ranging from JFLL to FRC.

Be on the lookout for those patches!

[Todd Biske]

Patty-

Do you any links to where we can get more information about this partnership? My oldest daughter is in a brownie troop and I'd love to pass this along to the troop leaders.