Annual Meeting
On Saturday, April 23, we convened, engaged
and celebrated many of our volunteers during the Girl Scouts of
West Central Florida 15th Annual Meeting and Volunteer
Awards Ceremony. We facilitated important business for our
organization, including the unanimous passing of a total revision of
our bylaws. The new bylaws create more transparency, more clarity in
roles and responsibilities, and a clear plan for board leadership
succession. We also elected numerous new members of our Board of
Directors, Board Development Committee members and National Delegates.
Visit our website’s Board of Directors
page to view our new bylaws and a list of Board and Board
Development Committee members.
We also shared the State
of the Council during the Annual Meeting. This reflected the critical
data points in our new 2021 Annual Report
and the momentum we have gained in 2022. We celebrated turning the
corner from the challenges we faced during the pandemic, including
beginning to grow again from a 30% decrease in membership due to
limited access to schools and community centers. Thankfully, our
collective passion for Girl Scouting did not waver, and we are
starting to see increases in membership, program participation and
revenue.
At the Annual Meeting, we launched our bold goal
to eliminate barriers to a high-quality Girl Scout Leadership
Experience (GSLE) and grow to 30,000 members by 2030. How will
we achieve this goal? We will be Mission-Driven, Member-Centered
and People-Empowered. We restructured our staff team and shifted
resources to increase support of and collaboration with volunteers,
deliver more local programming, heighten our visibility in
communities, and strengthen our neighborhood partnerships with
schools, places of worship, community centers, and other youth-serving
organizations such as The Boys and Girls Clubs and Pace
Centers.
We want to ingrain Girl Scouting in the
cultural fabric of every community we serve. For all of our 110
years, the number one marketing tactic for growing Girl Scout
membership has been “word of mouth.” Juliette Gordon Low did not have
social media or Google advertising. She believed Girl Scouts – an
all-girl, girl-led experience – was the best character and leadership
development opportunity for girls, and she told everyone she could
about it!
That’s where you come in – be a champion
for Girl Scouts. We’d love for our Girl Scouts and their
families to promote all the ways Girl Scouts is building girls of
courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place.
Imagine if all 16,000 GSWCF members recruited one other member to join
our movement. We’d soar past our 30,000 goal. That’s the power of our
collective passion for Girl Scouting.
One of my favorite
Juliette Gordon Low quotes is, “Scouting rises within you and
inspires you to put forth your best.” Let’s do our best to raise
our voices to all we know, multiplying our momentum in growing Girl
Scouts. Thank you for being a champion for Girl Scouts!
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