Girl Scouts recruiting volunteers to help area troops
FARMINGTON – People interested in helping coordinate activities for Girl Scouts are needed in Franklin and northern Androscoggin counties.
Ellen Young and Tammy Hemminger, representatives of the Sandy River Service Unit part of the Kennebec Girl Scout Council, are looking for adults to help come up with ideas for working with girls and to help follow through with activities.
If people want to volunteer to serve as a committee chair or in some other capacity such as an area consultant or town contact person that would help, Hemminger said.
“We need volunteers to help support local troops of Girl Scouts,” Young said.
The existing team organizing activities for Girl Scouts in the region consists of four people, Hemminger said.
Hemminger, a Livermore Falls mother of three daughters has been actively involved in scouting since her girls were young.
Young of Livermore works for the Girl Scout organization and has for many years.
The board overseeing Franklin County and Livermore and Livermore Falls Girl Scouts meets about eight times a year for a 90 minutes each time. The next meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, in Room 209 of Roberts Learning Center at the University of Maine at Farmington.
“We plan and implement events for girls to participate in,” Hemminger said.
Only four towns in the region are represented out of about 20 towns and the women would like to expand that number.
Young and Hemminger would like to get a representative from each town to volunteer as a liaison or find some other way to increase the service team.
There are 39 troops in the Sandy River Service Unit and about 80 leaders.
Some of the activities coordinated in the past were working at food banks stocking shelves, planting flowers a community place, making food baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas for shut-ins and one troop has adopted a nursing home for a year.
There have been family movie days, science days and winter fun festivals.
“We are looking for people interested in providing well rounded programs for girls,” Young said.
They’d also like to increase the number of girls participating in scouting programs especially at the middle and high school levels.
Last year, there were about 381 girls registered of the 2,500 eligible to join.
It’s recruiting season again.
Registrations have increased this year over last year, a trend for the last few years but in order to sustain the growth, Young said “we need to have a varied growth.”
Anyone interested in finding out more can call Hemminger at 897-2956.
Hemminger said she enjoys seeing the happiness that girls exhibit when they’re participating in scouting activities.
“Girl Scouting is a preventative,” Young said, “because you don’t see the results until these young ladies mature …when they are going out into the community. The benefits are something not instantaneous; it’s something-long term.”
dperry@sunjournal.com
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