Up until last week, I was volunteering with a Virtual Girl Scout troop each week. I wanted to do this for a few reasons:

The first of which being that I had volunteered at an event for younger girls last year about the cookie program, and I loved every minute of it. It felt so good to know that I was helping girls understand the organization, and develop skills such as personal relations, money management, and organization. I knew that I wanted to work with younger girls again, and I thought volunteering with a troop would be a great opportunity for that. 

Another reason was that it would help me earn an award that I’ve been working on for a while, but that wasn’t as important.

The final reason I wanted to work with the troop was so I could get some experience for my Senior Project. I have had some experience working with younger girls in the past, but never creating programming or running meetings. I worked alongside two adult leaders who work for the Girl Scouts of Greater New York organization and they created most of the programming, but they left some of it up to me. I learned about how to speak to younger girls, make projects that they can understand, and engage them. My co-leaders, Carolyn and Nyasa, were great with helping me understand working with younger girls, because even though the girls I was working with were in 6th grade rather than 2nd, there was still a substantial gap between our ages. It just so happened that one of my co-leaders, Nyasa, went to LREI for high school! This just made my project a lot easier. She did her own Senior Project in 2012, when I was in 5th grade, so she understands the core of what the project is, and the general information about how it works. She said she can help me set up an internship.

In this post, I want to dig a little deeper into the feasibility of my project. 

• Technical Feasibility: chances are, this will all take place online, which somewhat limits the activities I can do, or the programing I can create, because I need to make sure that there is equal opportunity for all girls to participate. If it was in person, the Girl Scouts headquarters could supply craft materials, a bigger space for girls to work together, and any other materials I would need. But since it will most likely be online, I can’t make any assumptions that all of the girls will have access to the same resources. This doesn’t necessarily make my project harder, but it will just make me think critically about what I can plan for.
• Economic Feasibility: There would be virtually no cost or expenses related to my project. Maybe the few craft supplies here and there, but I already have a lot of that at my disposal, and when considering equity, I might not plan for as many craft projects.
• Operational Feasibility: My project is dependent on the Girl Scouts of Greater New York and their different departments. I’m unsure which department my internship would fall under, whether it be the Cookie Program, STEM, or camp, but I am aware that I won’t be able to just do anything that I want. I would have to work hand-in-hand with the staff of the departments and be an aide to what they are already working on, while proposing my own ideas.
• Academic Feasibility: There’s no doubt that I will learn a lot from this project, whether it is in-person or online. Managing younger children in-person and online are two completely different ball games, and I’ve mostly worked with children in-person. I can learn a lot about the behavior of young girls, how to keep them engaged, and how to educate them while having fun.
• Scheduling Feasibility: I think that my project can definitely be completed in the given time frame. I’m unsure of how many programs I will be able to run/help with because I’m unsure of how many that Girl Scouts already has planned, but there is a lot of programming and learning that can happen over three months.