Mary Hearon, a fellow Rotarian from the Rotary Club of Austin was our speaker on June 3rd. Mary spoke to us about Girls Scouts of Central Texas. In central Texas, they serve over 12,000 girls in 46 counties with the support of 2,000 volunteers. She told us the Girl Scouts were started by Juliette Gordon Low to level the playing field by teaching girls the skills that they were not being taught in school or at home. The Girls Scouts’ goal is to build courage, confidence, and character and make the world a better place. The badges awarded to the scouts have changed overtime; for example, there is now there is a robotics team. Girl Scouts is the largest girl leadership program in the U.S. Mary told how growing up these days is scary and that supportive adults can make a difference. The Girls Scouts have four pillars: STEM, Outdoors, Life skills, and Entrepreneurship. They also have community programs in schools for girls who cannot afford to join a troop and a program called Girl Scouts on the Go! Which is a van which has taken the Girl Scout programs mobile. Mary gave us statistics on the success of Girl Scout alumni versus non-Girl Scouts. There have been three U.S. Secretaries of State that were former Girl Scouts as well as most of the female NASA astronauts. 60% of women in Congress have historically been Girls Scouts. Girl Scout alums are more likely than non-alums to show courage, confidence, and character across positive life outcomes, engage in the community and take civic action, be more satisfied with life, exhibit leadership attributes and hold more leadership roles, and outperform in education and career attainment. For more information, go to www.gsctx.org.