Taylor Ford
Community Power Sec. 1
Research Paper #2
4 December 2015
Community Engagement – Girl Scout Volunteer Work
For my community engagement I am going to discuss my current involvement with a Girl Scout Troop in my hometown, Falls Church, VA. I have been volunteering with this troop since my senior year of high school, and continue to help out occasionally on weekends and holidays. Over Thanksgiving Break on Tuesday night when I got home, I attended a troop meeting, the girls were making gingerbread houses for an elderly community, Winter Hill. This was just one meeting to make gingerbread houses they usually make houses a multiple meetings close to the holidays. Closer to the holidays in mid December we will take the houses to the elderly and host a holiday party. For now they are just making the house that will be decorated in the closer to the party date. My involvement this year was helping make the houses and then once I get home after exams I plan to help decorate the houses and help them in hosting the holiday party.
I became involved with this form of community engagement through my own Girl Scout troop, this was an activity we use to partake in, and before graduating we helped a younger troop get involved in making houses and hosting a holiday party, passing the baton essentially. I felt it was important to continue my involvement with the troop and have been able to help out on some weekends and holidays since coming to college. I loved my time as a Girl Scout and I am still good friends with most of the members of my old troop. I feel that the Scouts promote good values and provide great opportunities to young girls.
This involvement and community outreach allowed the girls and I to impact the elderly in our community. Providing them with a little holiday cheer is wonderful especially at a time of year that can often be harder for older individuals as they may not have family or friends in the area to celebrate this joyous time of year. It also allowed me to show the girls just how important giving back to the community can be! I hope my involvement not only brought joy to the elderly but also to the young girls in the troop.
This experience showed they different power structures involved: the Girl Scouts organization has the most power is this case, that organization is the governing body for troops, then there is the actual troop (leaders, girls scouts, and other volunteers like myself) I worked with has power to make decisions in how they involve themselves with the local community, they had the power to decide to work with the elderly. Beneath the troop is the elderly population at Winter Hill, they are receiving the outreach from the troop and have the decision as to whether or not they partake in the holiday party. This is the power structure I have seen from my experience in volunteering with the local Girl Scout troop.