Girl Scouts is a premier voice for girls and a leading expert on their growth and development. Together with committed adult volunteers, who partner with girls to guide them through the Girl Scouts Leadership Experience, the organization builds girls of confidence, courage and character who make the world a better place.

Here we will be sharing with you examples of this leadership experience. So, sit back and take a Moment for the Mission.

Raisa's Garden

Raisa has been involved with the Wee Gardener program for two years. This past spring, in addition to her Wee Gardener Program garden, she also planted a vegetable/flower garden downtown (Wellsboro) at a very busy street intersection on the property of the United Methodist Church for her Bronze Award Project. The Food Pantry is hosted there, and she donated all of the food that she grew at both gardens to the Food Pantry (with the exception of one harvest of squash which, much to her dismay, her dad had cooked up for our supper before we had gotten home!). She had a lot of fun planting, harvesting, counting, and weighing her vegetables (almost 100 lbs.!) and taking them to the Food Pantry. When she filled out her Bronze Award completion form, she wrote, "I chose this project because I enjoy gardening and giving food to help teach others to grow healthy food. It was fun seeing how many vegetables come within a week."

The most surprising aspect for both of us was that some of the older members of our church were a little skeptical of a vegetable garden adorning this location (many who had been farmers)—they worried about aesthetics, vandalism, . . . but she stayed positive and planted away. There had always been shrubbery and flowers there. As things started growing, those same members actually got excited about seeing all the produce and were pleasantly surprised at how beautiful it was. Even though teens hang out across the street at our local park, no one bothered the garden.

At the downtown location, she grew cucumbers, cabbage, green/yellow/purple/red peppers, poblabno peppers, celery, egg plants, nasturtiums, in addition to mums, geraniums, marigolds, salvia, zinnias, and lavender. At the Wee Gardener garden, she grew sunflowers, marigolds, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, egg plants, and squash. She learned a lot about different diseases--powdery mildew and blight, and how to care for those.

The whole theme for her project was to teach sustainability in an urban setting, showing people that they can grow fresh, healthy vegetables in a small area while looking beautiful.