It's Your World - Change It! in a small-town Service Unit

Setting the physical stage:
In the world of Girl Scouting, the national organization (GSUSA) is broken up into councils... my state has five or six of them after the Great Realignment. My Council covers 9 counties, including 3 major cities, 2 minor cities, and an abundance of towns and villages (one county has more dairy cattle than people - in an almost 3-to-1 ratio). The counties are then broken up into smaller Service Units - mine is one of 4 (I think) in my county. Service Units are broken into troops... my Service Unit covers two villages and the towns immediately surrounding them - it's easier to say that the Service Unit covers the school district. This past year we had 1 GS Daisy troop, 4 GS Brownie troops, 4 GS Junior troops, 2 GS Cadette/Senior troops and 1 GS Ambassador troop. We live in a pretty rural community near a relatively large city.

Got all that?

Setting the Program stage:
In my Service Unit, I have voluntarily taken on co-leading a GS Brownie/Junior troop, Adult Recognition Chair, Facilitator, and Leader Development Coordinator (sounds much nicer than "Training and Records Nazi," right?). I also organize a number of events for all of the girls in the Service Unit, including our annual World Thinking Day event, our SU Kick-off event, J-Low Birthday Party With A Twist (co-organizer), Brownie Weekend (co-organizer), and Junior Jamboree (co-organizer)... yes, in my perfect GS world, I would give up leading a troop and become SU Event Wrangler, but that's not happening anytime soon as far as I can tell.

Over the past couple of years, GSUSA has developed a new core program for Girl Scouts called "Journeys." As far as my council has said, and I pointedly asked the Director of Training, these Journeys are meant to be the core of the program, and Daisy Petals, Brownie Try-Its, Junior Badges, and Older Girl Interest Projects are the side courses on the Program buffet. The first Journey that was released is called It's Your World - Change It! The second Journey that is now being released is It's Your Planet - Love It!

Action:
SO, one of my co-leaders signed on to help oversee a program offering for the Service Unit where we focus on the first Journey for a number of weeks over the summer. It's win-win: she is in charge of an event but not on her own, and I'm able to teach someone else event planning and then hope to hand it off in the future. We got together a couple of weeks ago and looked over the adult and girl books for the GS Daisy, Brownie, and Junior levels. We figured out that within a session or two, they all paralleled each other - enough to make our idea feasible.

We have opted for the following set-up
1. A 5-week program meeting on the same night each week - excepting the first day of school - for an hour and a half in the local park.
2. A "Parent Zone" where parents can hang out and socialize without being "helicopter parents."
3. We'll open and do a small activity together, and then break into the three GS-level groups to complete Journey-specific activities.
4. Ideally, a GS Parent will lead each of the three groups with a current GS Leader as direct support - creating the potential for a small-theatre success for parents who are on the fence about becoming a GS Leader.
5. We're going to strongly encourage the girls to think of outdoor projects for their Take Action Projects.
6. The girls can participate regardless of their leader's level of participation or the rest of their troop's level of participation. The "Teams" as the Journeys call for will be created with the other girls in their GS level at the program.

Step one, planning... done!
Step two, recruiting...

I called a number of parents and leaders, and when all was said and done, we had a GS Daisy Parent, a GS Daisy Leader, and a GS Brownie Leader... I'm not giving up hope, but that is at least adequate for now. Within the last 12 hours... all heck has broken loose, it seems language became too muddled, and the short end of it is that we have a GS Daisy Parent-looking-to-lead-next-year and a GS Brownie Leader. Still, we're okay.

Step two, recruiting... done... well, maybe or maybe not.
Step three, advertising to girls and parents...

When we had at least a minimal number of adults to lead the program, I put together a flyer and sent it out through e-mail as a PDF file to all of the leaders, specifically asking them to forward the information to the girls in their troops and clearly stating that the girls were welcome to attend even if the leader did not want to attend. Within the last 24 hours, I found out the leaders of two troops haven't even told their girls about this offering. cue vocalized growling

Step three, advertising... done... at least as well as I can personally manage.

The first night of the program is on August 12th, so the next update will probably be posted near then.