Girl Scouts make the world a better place

To the editor:

Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains is honored to have been chosen by the NH Business Review for its AWE (Advocate for Women’s Empowerment) award.

The award recognizes those who have made the effort to ensure generations of women succeed, and that is the goal of everything we do at Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains. Girl Scouts provide powerful year-round experiences that unleash the G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader) in every girl, preparing her for a lifetime of leadership. Our council serves more than 10,000 girls in more than 900 troops with the assistance of nearly 5,000 trained and dedicated volunteers. Our programming focuses on STEM, the outdoors, life skills and entrepreneurship, and is the largest leadership development organization in the world for girls.

Girl Scouts is proven to help girls as they develop a strong sense of self, display positive values, seek challenges and learn from setbacks, form and maintain healthy relationships, and identify and solve problems in the community.

Girl Scouts fuels the female leadership pipeline. Half of all female business leaders were once Girl Scouts. That number rises to 80 percent of female tech leaders. Every one of our female U.S. secretaries of state were Girl Scouts, as were 76 percent of our female U.S. senators.

In New Hampshire and Vermont, 16 young women earned their Gold Award, the highest achievement in Girl Scouting. That means each of them took on a project in her community and single-handedly changed the world forever and for the better.

For example, Christina Wiles of Brandon, Vt., created a mentoring program between high school and elementary school children to address the issue of bullying, and Annalise Poisson of Amherst, NH, organized a Young Women’s Health Expo with U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan as keynote speaker to address the importance of affordable and equal accessibility to healthcare for all women.

The inclusive, all-female environment of a Girl Scout troop creates a safe space where girls can try new things, develop a range of skills, take on leadership roles and just be themselves.

We thank NH Business Review for recognizing our work and the mission of Girl Scouts to build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place.

Patricia Mellor

CEO

Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains