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[quote=Anonymous]This is how I became a leader. Our school had a big troop for all levels but expected someone to lead each grade separately. My older daughter was already in a troop and I was asked to lead when my younger daughter came of age.

I did insist on having our own troop number, which was a life saver because the book keeping was a nightmare for what were essentially independent troops sharing one number/account. During COVID most of the other grades stopped meeting . . . I think we might be the only troop that didn't fold.

I knew I could handle being a leader; I'm a former teacher and SAHM. I recruited a co-leader whom I'd met a couple of times; it was important to me that the troop not be filled with all my friends' kids like my older daughter's troop was. The next year we wanted to open our troop to all the girls in the grade, so I asked all my parents and two more moms signed on. So now we have four leaders. In some ways it's maybe too many cooks in the kitchen, but I still do most of the planning and only one mom is consistently helpful. It's still nice to have the others because they'll step up from time to time.

Our Council seems to be struggling (I think they barely avoided bankruptcy during the pandemic) and oversight and support is minimal. You have to be pretty self-sufficient to run a troop, and as a result you'll get a wide variety of interpretations of what Girl Scouts means to the leader(s). I'm not really gung ho about the philosophy or anything; I just want to provide a fun and safe environment for the girls.

In our council we do not have to list our troop on the online search function (when we were listed on there they kept adding girls who lived far away, when we're a school-specific troop, so I made them remove us). It may be that there are troops nearby that you can't see; you'll have to ask your council.

Leading a troop is a big ask and I try to make it as stress free as possible. Like I said, my council has basically stopped organizing events and offering programming. So for example I'm taking my troop to Colonial Williamsburg. We're staying at a rustic Air BNB nearby. I wanted to do this because our schools have stopped doing field trips thanks to the pandemic, and because I'm not really a camping person. Planning a camping weekend would nearly do me in. This is something I can handle. Likewise, we only meet once a month after school (and then plan about one weekend event per month). I don't have the bandwidth for more. If you do end up leading, you can make it what you want it to be.[/quote]

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