Catch a Green Idea

The other day my daughter, who is ten, was wide eyed, carrying an old lap top that I have rigged up for her. She plopped it in front of me and began to cry, “My computer has a virus!” (It didn’t, but the protection software was giving her a message about viruses). She then proceeded to ask me if she could catch a virus from her computer and “how did it get a virus??” (She was appalled when I told her that people actually created viruses!)
With the threat of a pandemic looming, I started thinking about how something passes from one person to another. It seems that every meeting I attend lately, someone is talking about viral marketing. I am pretty sure it is an old idea dressed up in new clothes. When I was a girl, many of my classmates were Girl Scouts. We had fun; it was a part of school and community. Girl Scouts marched in the town parade; they participated in the ceremonies for Memorial Day and helped when there was a paper drive or a food drive at church.
Today the explosion of online communities has replaced some in-the-flesh “real” life for virtual life. But we are all still seeking something similar: the sense of connection with others, a sense of belonging, a place to go (where everybody knows your name?). How do those communities spread? How does someone “catch” the idea? Marketing studies point out that people often try brands because of someone else’s personal testimony. I know that is a great deal of how I end up trying something, particularly something unfamiliar to me.
As a movement, Girl Scouts is a community of people who have an opportunity to spread the word about our experiences. We are working on not leaving that idea up to chance, but focusing on the key messages that we think are important for everyone to share about Girl Scouts.
1) Girls need Girl Scouts – have you thought about how hard it is to be a girl these days? There are a myriad of messages about what it means to be a girl, girls’ bodies are changing earlier and so childhood for girls is getting smaller, role models for girls are still few and far between (in our state, less than 13% of our elected officials are women!)
2) Girl Scouts has been teaching leadership to girls for close to 100 years! Juliette Low’s radical act of 1912 was to bring girls and women out into the community to do activities on their own – at a time before women could vote or own property.
3) The community we are creating by our inclusion; is a great place to raise a girl. Each time a new girl/woman joins Girl Scouts, our community is enriched. As a mom, the Girl Scout community, with its core values of courage, confidence and character, is a great place for my daughters.