Girl Scout Service Project - Mission Accomplished

My Girl Scout troop finished their Spring Service Project at the end of April. A big accomplishment for my 4th and 5th grade Junior girls!

Throughout cookie season, the troop collected cookies for soldiers overseas. We attended a Girl Scout Council-sponsored event in the middle of March (read about that here)

After meeting and talking with the soldiers at Camp Edwards, my troop decided to complete their Spring Service project by going one step further, and collecting additional care package items and sending them overseas to local soldiers stationed in Iraq.

The founder of a local non-profit group, Harwich Helps Heroes, came to our meeting to brainstorm with the girls. We sent letters to both the elementary and middle schools to ask for help, but in the end only the middle school worked with us. We had a special meeting to make posters and hang them around the hallways of the school, and we decorated a big collection box to place in the school's lobby. We also made a "piece of home" craft, with shells and sand collected from our shores.

At one of our regular meetings at the local library at the end of April, we organized all the goodies that we'd collected (including the rest of the girl scout cookies!) My 9 scouts packed 10 stuffed-to-the-gills packages to send overseas.
What did the girls learn? Hopefully they learned that by working together as a team, they can accomplish bigger things. And that they can really make a difference in other people's lives.

What did I learn? That I really need to keep taking steps backward, with my hands firmly clenched behind my back, and let the girls do it themselves. Yes, it takes longer. Yes, it doesn't always go the way I think it should. Yes, it's frustrating for a control freak like me.

But they can do it. And they did.