38 Leaders Give Their Advice on Keeping Older Scouts Interested

As a troop leader, what can you do you do to retain your older girls?

These ideas come from the facebook page Freebies for Girl Scouts.

We’ve included some patch suggestions because even older girls like fun patches!

Skill building patches can help keep older girls interested.

From Misty:
When my troop was in high school, we met once a month and focused on hosting one community activity each month and going on experiences. We hosted tea parties, Harry Potter classes, camporee, drawing classes, among other things.

Some of the experiences we did were traveling to Europe, going to a concert, camping, eating at their favorite restaurants, and seeing a play or musical.

From Lana:
Discuss their passion. What issue motivates them – feeding the hungry? Helping low-income youth? Something in the environment? Does something in the town need attention, like a community garden, a little library, or clearing an overgrown trail? Something at school, like a ‘period products’ closet, or tutoring program? Is there something needed at an assisted living center or a veterans home?

From Sara:
Do fun things. Be willing to travel. Let them hang out. Include badge work where you can. We went indoor skydiving last night, and it was a blast. Camping at the beach at the end of May. Apple Store workshops on videos and editing. After school snack bags for local food bank was great community service project.

From Janeen:
Ask your girls what they want to do. Mine are interested in food and cooking-related topics. Also building, creating, and remaking items-furniture and clothing.

From Melissa
Camp and travel to programs/places of interest to them. Work on community service projects near to their heart and leadership opportunities through higher awards and scholarship opportunities. Be sure to protect the safe space the troop has created for them and their voice and wishes for the direction of their journey.

From Amanda
They chose what they want to do. Don’t make them “babysit” the younger girls.

From Patti
Travel. Big travel plans. Trips they can’t create without scouts.

From Kristina
We switched to a badge in a day on weekends. Take one Saturday and bring lots of snacks. Include a guest to come help present. And let them choose what badges they want.

From Melissa
Ask them what they want to do! Let them lead the meetings, and make the decisions on what they will be doing throughout the year! If you’re doing what they pick, they should not lose interest.

From Janice
Some ideas our older girls have loved are weekend camping trips, aerial yoga, ice skating, horseback riding, and hiking, especially in new places.

From Christine
Poll them for what they want to do. Tell them money is no object and go from there on what to create/help them create for their activities. I find myself using ChatGPT often to make it more interactive and interesting for my Jr/Cad girls as they feel some of what is written to do is dated.

From Melinda
See what they like to do and places they like to go. My daughter’s troop met twice a month. They like to go out to eat and try new restaurants and coffee shops.

After they got the Bronze, they would figure out what they wanted to do for their Silver, and then they all did private community projects, some as a troop because they could serve the community better that way.

From Florence
We have a fun activity that the girls enjoy. We’ve done a scavenger hunt for the past several years. Prior to the scavenger hunt they have a troop sponsored shopping trip and purchase a crazy outfit for their selected scout to wear. They are required to wear their outfit during the scavenger hunt. It’s always so much fun.

From Miranda
I agree that letting the girls pick their activities helps, or letting them help plan for them and for the little kids if y’all have any in y’all’s troop. Try moving the meetings around to different places such as a park, zoo, or anything like that. Getting them outside now that it is so nice out is always a great idea.

From Meredith
Have them brainstorm ideas at the beginning of the GS year and continue having them make many of the decisions. Should be girl-lead especially as they get older. My troop is 9-10-year-olds. We vote on decisions as we go throughout the year. I want them to get the most out of Girl Scouts and learn some important skills as well.

From Christina
As an older scout in High School – we shifted to skills to prep us for college life.

Each campout we chose an “adult meal” to learn to prep and cook on our own. Not just Mac n cheese but something that we wanted to impress friends or take to social gatherings.

We did car maintenance (change tire, change air filter, etc), house maintenance (gutters, toilet bowl), and financial (talking long-term goals of apartment contracts, savings)

Our leaders helped us find field trips/meetings with careers we were interested in on location.

Quarterly campouts were an awesome of just destressing away from band, sports, and HS homework. Usually with a service project for the council campgrounds.

Girl Scouts was one of my favorite parts of high school.

From Amy
We did a co-older girls camping trip with the older girls from another troop and they had a blast! I also give the older kids additional fun tasks each meeting so they take on the big sister role to the younger girls (we have a rainbow troop), or Troop Leader-In-Training parts so they feel a part of what we’re doing each meeting.

From Mandi Jo
Work with their schedules, and keep things simple. We went down to just a few meetings and camping 3 or 4 times a year. I did things that related to what each girl was planning on doing. And always worked food into everything.

From Jaguar
Do fun events. They are so burned out on school & all their other responsibilities, they need fun hangout time. Doing badge work feels like more school to them unless u think outside of the box for ways to complete steps. Oh, and don’t tell them they are working on the badge, just surprise them once it’s completed!

From Mary
Go intensely girl-led. They make the plans. They choose. For example, our girls wanted to have a meeting at Starbucks to do Program Aide planning. We did it and they were THRILLED.

From Laylah
Our Cadettes are headed to Costa Rica in June, and the girls are really excited. Definitely create space to let them collectively decide what they want to do and how often they would like to meet. Try to suggest activities that alleviate cliques within the troop and foster unity among all the girls.

From Rebecca
Our older scouts would rather plan fun events for our younger troops then to do their own badges. Some still focus on prerequisites for higher awards, but mainly they want to hang out, snack, and plan camping trips, sleepovers, world thinking day parties, or badge work for younger troops.

From Paula
They all love food! We have rolled Sushi, decorated focaccia bread, did a murder mystery dinner party, GS cookie recipe cook-off. Made pizzas at Bubba’s. When we need to have a lot of discussions, I grab my coffee pot, fancy creamers, and a pack of cookies.

Mine also love games. We did RPG badge last year and they love the game Werewolf. We watched Buy Now on Netflix (filtered out Fbombs) and are discussing up-cycling crafts. We made denim feathers while discussing plans for the next few weeks. I gave them a sheet to write any crazy idea they have and looks like they want to do crafts, go thrifting and upcycle jeans next -pray for me.

From Donna
I’m of the opinion, as a service unit manager, you need to start this conversation at the junior level. You have to, in essence, sell them on what the older girl experience looks like. Travel, older girl awards, and experiences that the older girls have in terms of leadership, running events and planning things. You have to tell them that you understand that Girl Scouts is not the main activity and that they want to do all the other things. Girl Scouts can be whatever they want to make of it and that’s okay. They can come when they want to. Participate what they want to participate in. If they want to sell cookies or don’t want to sell cookies, that’s fine too.

Then you also may run into the situation where sometimes if they’re not mentoring older girls, they don’t see what’s down the pike. I had a conversation with Junior parents a couple of weeks ago and I told them what the future could hold for their scouts. I told them even some of the selfish reasons like what earning the awards would do for their college search, and scholarships, and even landing their first job. There are so many reasons why scouts should choose to see this journey through. But it’s up to us as volunteers to start and continue that conversation. I feel councils and National do a lousy job of that, and they wonder why enrollment is down.

From Christina
We usually meet once a month, maybe twice. Sometimes we do a meeting at Starbucks or go out to dinner. My girls are all freshmen and are foodies so they love to go out and try new food. I don’t put too much stress on myself anymore and I’m just happy they love to be in the troop.

From Kristen
Keep going with the flow. At the beginning of the year, they just wanted to hang out. By January they were missing the Girl Scout time so we took a poll on what they wanted and started doing badges again. They want to do things for the local animal shelter so that’s a thing we’re doing. And food. Lots of food.

From Marcella
Do your best to do what the girls want to do. Even if it is going to Dunkin’ or Starbucks to hang out. Make it a discussion night. My girls have been together since kindergarten and they all earned their Gold Award and are now high school seniors. They always come to meetings. Make it about the girls!

From Cara
Our 7 Cadettes are in 7th grade and very engaged. They really liked making digital vision boards in canva for what to do with cookie money. They are most excited about overnights. We are doing 2 overnights at camp this year as well as an overnight on the Intrepid, a sleepover and hopefully a tent camping trip with the urban park rangers.

Last year we did an aquarium overnight. We get experts to help lead as much badge work / activities as possible now. Candle making and trees with the urban park rangers, foraging with a local expert, archery at an archery place near us, comic artists we had a local comic artist come to one of our meetings. I spend a lot of time on outreaching for “experts” who will help us. We had a therapy dog come to a meeting for animal helpers. They went to the Red Cross for a training for babysitter and first aid. We did a broadway show trip to Suffs.

They have really liked: night owl, babysitting, comic artist, trees (esp the cooking and art steps, but also the tree rubbings and ID they did with the park ranger) and any overnight. They are doing woodworking in the spring. They also like to do community service projects.

We keep the troop small, take lots of input from the girls, and meet mostly in a park so it feels NOTHING like school. That’s the biggest thing I think.

From Nodisha
Traveling definitely helps our girls stay engaged. We take an international trip every other year. We’ve been to Costa Rica, Greece and Japan is next. Then stateside trips the opposing year. NY, TN, GA, etc.

From Renee
We have been alternating between badge work over 2 meetings, and then spend one meeting learning a new craft. I’ve got 9 cadettes and they voted on everything we’re doing this year, Badges and crafts, and we have 2 hour meetings. I do think it’s helped hold interest and they still have time to chat like they are prone to do. Crafts we’ve dug into so far include origami, embroidery, cross stitch and we have macrame coming up.

From Havens
Consider merging troops with other CSA troops, they probably have dwindling numbers, too. This should bring a lot of fresh life and energy.

Keep it really simple: big travel based on what they want, higher awards, and leadership of the service unit. Let them help plan and run service unit events, partner with daisies to sell cookies, run brownie meetings, summer camp counselor. It should look and feel totally different from the DBJ days.

From Meg
We survey our girls and try to do as much as they want. We do lots of outings, and try to diversify activities. We also empower girls to lead meetings and share their interests.

From Wendy
Mine enjoy cooking and talking. I used to have them focus on badges when they were younger but this is what they enjoy. They also enjoy service projects.

From Traece
Don’t meet on school nights. Let them lead plan. Skip the boring badges unless they want to do them. Have them invite friends!! No friends is boring. Mine don’t want to sit & do work after school. They want to camp, lead, canoe, archery, all the active stuff.

From Amandalynn
We have the girls fill out a survey on Google forms with all the level offerings, annual events with council and service unit, and space for ideas or things they’re excited about.

Then we have our annual planning meeting and we schedule the highest-voted, items right away.

We also discuss the extra ideas that were dropped and vote in person on adding them this year or tabling for another time. Then we ask which girls want to help with each badge workshop.

They decide every step of the way but the anonymous surveys allow us to know what everyone really is interested in and prioritizing accordingly.

From Amanda
We give our kids a lot of freedom. Many of them are in extracurriculars, so they earn badges outside of the troop doing those activities (sports=sportsmanship badges, etc). They come to meetings and events when they can. Sometimes they do homework at meetings.

From Tina
Let them plan and guide the way. When they were in middle school each girl or pair would choose a month and then they picked an activity like a painting outing, a badge, or community service. They would ask us about the budget and logistics. We also guided and helped to keep the awards on schedule.

From Angela
We have 9 Cadettes. The girls vote on what they want the theme of the year to be (badgework, field trips, travel, etc.) and then they pick out some ideas within the theme. We vote on just about everything. I’m sending out Google Forms at least monthly. And we do majority votes. 

From Caribou
My bestie has Caddetts. Their biggest complaints are 1- always being the helpers and never getting to just be there and participate and 2 – in many cases they’ve done the badges more than once already. They’ve evolved into more of an adventure troop keeping things more hands-on and less formal