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What are visiting hours and the need for advance reservations?
What are our options for getting there?
What’s the least and most this trip could cost?
What can we do now to get ourselves ready?
How will we earn the money?
What’s the availability of drinking water, restrooms, and eating places?
Where is emergency help available?
What safety factors must we consider?
What will we do as we travel?
What will we do when we get there?
How will we share the Take Action story?
As girls answer these questions, they begin the trip-planning process. In time, girls can make specific
arrangements, attend to a myriad of details, create a budget and handle money, and accept
responsibility for their personal conduct and safety. Later, after they’ve returned from an event or trip,
girls also have the chance to evaluate their experiences and share them with others.
Using Journeys and The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting in Their Travels
Girl Scout travel is an ideal way to offer girls leadership op portunities. Encourage girls to choose one of
the three series of National Leadership Journeys. The Journey’s theme will give girls a way to explore
leadership through their travels. Use the adult guide to incorporate activities and discussions that help
girls explore the Three Keys to Leadership (Discover, Connect, and Take Action) as they plan their trip
and eventually travel.
Tying your trip to the topic of a Leadership Journey is a cinch. For example, if Cadette girls have chosen MEdia,
before their trip they can read online newspapers from the area to which they’re traveling—and evaluate when
they arrive how well the media reflects the realities there. If Senior girls are using SOW WHAT?, they can plan to
observe agricultural practices in other parts of the country or around the world. Ambassadors using BLISS: Live
It! Give It! can build a trip around dreaming big—and empowering others in their community to dream big, too.
If girls also want to complete skill-building badge requirements as part of their trip, they can. The most obvious
example is the Senior Traveler badge, which fits perfectly into planning a trip. In addition, girls can explore other
badge topics, depending on the focus of their trip. For examples, Cadettes can explore the food in other regions
or countries for their New Cuisines badge, Seniors can find out about international business customs as part of
their Business Etiquette badge, and Ambassadors can work on their Photography badge while documenting
their trip.
Be sure to visit the “Girl Scouting as a National Experience” chapter in this handbook to find out more
about the three exciting series of Journeys and The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting.
To ensure that any travel you do with girls infuses the Girl Scout Leadership Experience at every
opportunity, limit your role to facilitating the girls’ brainstorming and planning—but never doing the work
for them. Allow the girls to lead, learn collaboratively, and learn by doing (and by making mistakes). All
the while, however, provide ideas and insight, ask tough questions when you have to, and support all
their decisions with enthusiasm and encouragement!