girl program

Girl Scouts is about sharing the fun, friendship, and power of girls and women together. Any girl—from kindergarten through 12th grade—can join Girl Scouts. What all members share, whether girls or adults, are the Girl Scout Promise and Law. Each member also agrees to follow safety guidelines and pay the annual membership dues of $12 (or purchase a lifetime membership for $300).

The Girl Scout Leadership Experience

The Girl Scout Leadership Experience engages girls in discovering self, connecting with others, and taking action to make the world a better place. Discover, Connect, and Take Action are the three keys to Leadership.

Discover: Girls understand themselves and their values and use their knowledge and skills to explore the world.

Connect: Girls care about, inspire, and team with others locally and globally.

Take Action: Girls act to make the world a better place.

In Girl Scouting, Discover + Connect + Take Action=Leadership. All Girl Scout experiences are intentionally designed to tie to one or more of the 15 National Leadership Outcomes, or benefits, categorized under the three keys to leadership.

What is a Journey?

A nationally packaged journey is designed to make it easy for girls and the volunteers who guide them to engage in the Leadership Experience. By following the journey plan – girls and adults will be “doing the leadership experience” – even without having to deeply know all the concepts.
A journey puts themed activities, discussions, team building and reflections in a sequence that makes sense. The “sample sessions” in the adult guides are intended – not as a “set number of meetings” – but to provide momentum and a road map for a ‘whole adventure’ that has more impact then any one activity in the journeys. No matter how much time girls spend on a journey, the whole is always greater then any single part.
The journeys have been created to provide meaningful experiences centered on both the keys to leadership – Discover, Connect, Take Action – and the processes – girl led, learning by doing and cooperative learning.
Journeys will provide an important foundation for each age level in Girl Scouting for girls and volunteers. Just by following a journey, members will be engaging in the Girl Scout Leadership Experience (and practicing some Girl Scout traditions!). When the journey ends, girls and their volunteers can apply what they have learned to everything else they do in Girl Scouting.

Journey Connections to State (and National) Curriculum Standards — The content of all Girl Scout journeys have been correlated (by grade level) to the new national Common Core Standards and the 21st Century Skills standards, as well as to the Health & PE, Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies learning objectives for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. To learn more about the Journey connections to state and national curriculum standards, click here.

What Do Girl Scouts Do?

Girl Scouts earn badges, hike and camp, participate in the Cookie Program, and much more. They improve neighborhoods, protect the planet, design robots, and establish sports clinics.

Girl Scout Daisy K – 1st grade	Girl Scout Cadettes 6th – 8th
Girl Scout Brownie 2nd – 3rd grades	Girl Scout Seniors 9th – 10th
Girl Scout Junior 4th – 5th grades	Girl Scout Ambassadors 11th – 12th

Girl Scout program starts girls off on a Journey of their choice from the National Leadership Journeys series where they can earn awards, have fun, and take on projects that change the world.
Girls then add The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting to their program portfolio. The Girl’s Guide offers girls national proficiency badges, traditions and history, an awards log, and much more. Let Brownie Elf walk you through a fun video describing the Girl’s Guide.
Girls will want to keep up with all the excitement in Girl Scouting by tuning into Girl Scouts for girls, a place just for girls and teens to enjoy Girl Scout games and videos and explore travel, global girls, and fun!

Flexible Ways to Participate

Across the country, the Girl Scout community is hard at work on a whole new approach to make sure that everyone can participate in Girl Scouting in the ways they want to.

Girls can choose any one, all, or some of the options—camp, events, series, troop, travel, and virtual*— within a single membership year. (*Note that virtual is still in development.) based on independent research and extensive surveys with thousands of council staff members from around the country, we have a good sense of which options will interest girls, based on their grade levels (see the chart at right).

Who Do You Want to Be?

Want to be an adventurer, scientist, financial manager, athlete, environmentalist, or reader? From sports skill-building clinics to career mentoring, world travel and cultural exchanges to local community service projects, environmental stewardships to financial literacy, the Girl Scout program enables you to be who you want to be. Find out more about what Girl Scouts do. Dive in to our Program Calendar, where you can Discover, Connect, and Take Action with girls across Central Florida!