Girl Scouts celebrate birthday

On March 24, the Jamestown Girl Scouts celebrated the 100th birthday of the Girl Scouts of the USA at the Buffalo Mall.

Girl Scouts Founder Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low assembled 18 girls from Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912, for a local Girl Scout meeting with the goal of bringing girls out of isolated home environments and into community service and the open air.

Within a few years, Low’s dream for a girl-centered organization was realized. Today, Girl Scouts of the USA has a membership of more than 3.2 million girls and adults. More than 50 million women in the U.S. today are Girl Scout alumnae.

The local Girl Scouts celebrated the day with a Birthday Marathon. Each troop volunteered to take one of the decades of the last 100 years and give a presentation with pictures of the decade’s historical highlights and Girl Scouts activities from those times. That troop then taught the other girls an activity that represented that decade.

The decades were represented by the troops as follows:

* 1912-1919, how to make pearl necklaces. Juliette Low sold her personal pearl necklace to fund the first Girl Scouts.

* 1920s, voting polls because women voted for the first time in 1920, “No Alcohol” pledges in honor of Prohibition and child care because that is what the Girl Scouts of that time did a lot of.

* 1930s, how to make scrap paper dolls such as the ones that were common during the Great Depression.

* 1940s, planting beans to learn about the Victory Gardens that were planted then to help World War II efforts.

* 1950s, hula hoop contests.

* 1960s, tie-dye project.

* 1970s, making pet rocks and designing protest posters to protest against bullies.

* 1980s, the Girl Scouts ratted and spray-painted their hair and made friendship pins.

* 1990s, the girls made friendship bracelets and danced to the Macarena.

All the girls then joined in pizza and birthday cupcakes and a dance party featuring the Charleston, the Hand Jive, the swing dance, the hip hop and many more dance styles that have been popular during the last 100 years. The girls than participated in a salute to the 100th birthday by releasing 100 biodegradable balloons to the skies and ended the marathon with a movie at the Bison 6 Cinema.

Currently Jamestown has 13 troops with 155 members. To learn about joining the Girl Scouts, call Sally Domke at 252-8433.

Tags: community, clubs, scouts