My troop of 5 Senior scouts in ninth and tenth grade decided to do the Senior “Mission: Sisterhood” Journey. Since high school students are so busy, we decided to do it as a weekend event. We invited the other 10th grade senior troops in our town to join us. Our group ended up with 14 girls together for the weekend along with five adults. Fortunately our town has a Girl Scout camp property which includes some heated buildings. Since our Mission Sisterhood Journey in a weekend would take place in January, we chose this as our venue.
The girls had a part in planning some of the activities. However, I did try to surprise them with some fun, new things. For example, our council has snowshoes available for troop rental. We took advantage of the weather and tried snowshoeing since part of the Journey involves doing an outdoor activity together.
The weekend started with a simple opening ceremony and then we went right to the activities. The girls did various activities to earn the steps of the journey award. One was a rock painting craft during which the girls painted positive messages on river rocks. The girls were able to keep, share, or “hide” the completed rocks. There were a lot of activities and discussions that involved defining what sisterhood means. What does sisterhood look like and what challenges are facing young ladies in today’s society. We even did a 21st century version of the “telephone game” to illustrate how texts can be misconstrued and misunderstood.
As part of the journey the girls were tasked with making and sharing a meal. They chose a taco bar and worked together to cook and prepare all the components. After dinner we had a GORP ceremony with each girl adding a component to the dish. We used that GORP as our movie snack and hunkered down for a showing of Steel Magnolias which is a movie with a strong sisterhood theme.
Finally, the girls brainstormed ideas for a Take Action project. We researched a lot of ideas for the weekend and settled upon making a video to share what we learned and felt about sisterhood. On the last morning of our event some of the girls worked together to create a collage poster with the sisterhood theme. Other girls gathered photos from the weekend to put in a video montage. The girls all worked together to select music to go with their video. Once they put it all together, the result was a video that reflected our time together. We posted our video to YouTube and shared it with our families. We used the hashtags #missionsisterhood and #journeyweekend when posting our video and pictures to social media. After obtaining permission from all of the parents, we shared them on social media as part of the sustainability of the Take Action project.
The weekend was considered a big success. The girls seemed to enjoy their time together, whether doing the structured journey activities or chatting and playing board games during “down time”. I would highly recommend doing a journey weekend. It is great if you are pressed for time, but it also makes the journey feel less “like school”, which is a common complaint in my troop!
The Friendship Fun Patch makes a great reminder for your girls of a fun weekend with their sister scouts.
My name is Stephanie Kersting, and I am the leader of Senior Troop 50704 in New Fairfield, CT.
