YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS
“Pushing Girl Scouts to push doorbells.” By Helena Oliviero. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. January 23, 2010. In an effort to boost door-to-door sales, the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta is offering new incentives including a specific “Walkabout” patch (featuring a girl taking strides), according to Sarnethia Wilkinson, product sales marketing representative for Girl Scouts Greater Atlanta cookie program. The patch will be given to girls who participate in chaperoned door-to-door sales in early March (or troops can select a different date to do a Walkabout). It used to be against the rules to send e-mail cookie pitches, but the Girl Scouts reconsidered because technology and e-mail are such a part of the girls’ lives, according to Wilkinson. Meanwhile, Internet sales, such as setting up a payment account or creating a Web site to sell the cookies, is strictly prohibited.
She also gives the Girl Scout blessing to selling cookies in the office, but said there should always be “girl involvement.”
“A Celebrated Scout Camp on Staten Island Is in Jeopardy.” By Joseph Berger. New York Times. January 24, 2010. IN the wooded heart of Staten Island lies a rugged spread of land, crowned by a rustic lake, that has provided camping grounds for Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts from the New York area for 60 years. It is called Camp Pouch, and though relatively few New Yorkers know of it, in the subculture of scouting it is celebrated. Many of the 52,000 scouts in the region visit throughout the year to pitch tents; build fires; apply their half hitches, bowlines and other knots; use a compass; apply first aid; and otherwise practice sometimes old-fashioned scouting skills. But all that is now in jeopardy. In November, the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America, the owner of the camp, announced that financial pressure might force it to put Camp Pouch on the market. The group, hit hard by the recession, has been operating at a deficit, and corporate and other donations have fallen by $5 million over the past 18 months — a colossal wound for an organization that until recently ran on a $15 million budget.