To prepare for this Critical Reflection, I read two documents: 1) Community Organizing Principles and Practice Guidelines by Terry Mizrahi, a professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. 2) Troop Start-Up Guide by the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio Council. 

1) I started broad with looking at community organization guides in general. Much of this academic article was addressing larger scale projects and directed towards multi-person teams, but one section I found especially interesting was Principle 3, which is entitled, “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘RATIONAL’ AND ‘IRRATIONAL’ FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HOW PROBLEMS ARE DEFINED OR RESOURCES ALLOCATED.” Mizrahi presents a scenario in which a system in place is seen as “irrational”, and then argues there is no such thing as an irrational system in place, because why would it be in place if it was irrational to everyone? A current system may be irrational to many, but if you look closer, you may see that it benefits someone. Mizrahi says that when you do this, “You will usually uncover reasons why conditions or attitudes have remained in place, why a need wasn’t met, why people have resisted change, or why a new program wasn’t implemented. Usually the case does make sense from the perspective of those who maintain that system or oppose the change. It is essential to consider reasons for the resistance to change.” I don’t work at the Girl Scouts headquarters and the goal of my project isn’t to change the organization from the inside out, but it is interesting to think about the root of my project and why this change in creating resources seems so rational to me, but may not seem that way to those working within the organization. My experience as a Girl Scout is vastly different from people who work at council, who see the budget, demographic breakdown, and more. Obviously this article was aimed at those creating large scale change for serious issues that impact communities, but this principle, and many of the others can be applied to my project. 

Principle 5, or “THE “COMMUNITY” IS NOT MONOLITHIC” is something that I have been struggling with in planning my Badge Guides and live sessions. I have a comfort zone for myself when it comes to the types of badges that I like to earn — I’ve liked to focus on the creation, art, life-skills, and research based badges, whereas other girls in the group enjoy STEM or outdoor themed badges (I learned this from a poll in the Discord server). I have to try to come up with a balance of activities that will engage girls with different areas of interest. However, the idea that “the ‘community’ is not monolithic” goes further than interests, but also access to resources. In my proposal pitch, I talked about how I wanted to focus on equity and creating resources that are accessible to everyone. At this point in my project, I am asking myself “have I done that?” There is no one way to make all of my resources accessible to everyone because there are so many factors that have to be taken into account — access to technology/Internet, access to activity materials, time they can dedicate to activities, etc. This question can’t be answered easily. I am trying to make my resources as accessible as possible by providing everything for free online, but there are always going to be circumstances that I can’t control, 

2) When I read the Troop Start-Up Guide, I knew I was going into a very different document. There are countless volunteer guides written by councils across the country that cover a wide range of topics, from troop budgeting to communication with parents. I read the table of contents, and skipped around to specific sections that I thought would be of use to me. 

The first section I read was titled “Inclusion in Girl Scouts.” There is a numbered list under the sub-title of “I want to be inclusive; how do I make sure that happens in my troop?” The second point was one that I addressed when reading the first article: “Make sure all girls have the opportunity to fully engage in activities and have access to opportunities and information. This may mean helping girls overcome barriers to participation, adjusting activities, or even changing how you communicate.” Something I may focus on in creating my Badge Guides from now on is listing alternate activities, or just more than one in general. This would give girls the opportunity to do the activities that make most sense for them to do. I could provide tasks that are more visual, rather than based on reading, which would be extremely important in accessibility for the research based badges. I can try to use more common household items when it comes to art badges. I have already done this with one of my Badge Guides. For the Cross-Training badge, I provided a few different activities for the strengthening element, one included using water bottles or canned food as weights. 

Another section that I read in the Troop Start-Up Guide was about leading meetings. I have never led a meeting by myself before. I’ve led smaller activities, but what I’m planning on doing with some of my live sessions would essentially be leading a troop meeting of girls who are in different troops. The first paragraph on the “Guiding Your Troop” page says, “learn with your girls… it doesn’t need to be perfect.” I don’t have the best track record with keeping calm when plans change or things are different to the way I planned. I’m very precise when it comes to planning, and that’s something that I am going to have to kind of throw out the window when planning live badge sessions.