The Girl Scout mission is to build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place. The way they do this is by empowering girls to have their kind of fun, build friendships, and understand the power of girls together. Girl Scouting helps girls develop their full individual potential by relating to others with increasing understanding, skill, and respect; developing values to guide their actions and provide the foundation for sound decision-making; and contributing to the improvement of society through their abilities, leadership skills, and cooperation with others.

We have a troop of 10 girls in Roswell, Georgia. These girls have been together for 10 years and we are very proud to say that these girls have succeeded in planning, budgeting and creating adventures hundreds of other girls, older and younger over the last 5 years to fund raise for other excursions.

This troop has funded 100% of their trips taken to Savannah and an adventure up the East Coast to visit Washington, DC, Colonial Williamsburg and Virginia Beach. The girls of Troop 25334 are now planning a 100% self funded trip to Rome, Italy and Athens, Greece in the summer of 2015 for 10 days. Self funded means asking for $0 from the parents. It means that 100% of the troop will be able to attend, no matter the families financial abilities.

The primary way this troop raises money is by planning, hosting and running camps for other girls. At these camps, each member of Troop 25334 will plan classes to teach each of the other troops along with extra activities outside of the classes. The classes range from jewelry making, art classes, outdoor cooking skills, fire safety, and many other traditional and non-traditional Girl Scout skills.

We are asking for you to sign this petition because our Council has changed the policy to no longer allow troops like ours to request camp space outside of the traditional troop requesting time period. Because of this, our attendance has dropped tremendously. We are only allowed to request space on Dec 1 for Spring camps and April 1 for Fall camps. By the time we get a response on whether or not we even get space and where it is, it is too late to invite people to attend because they have already planned their events for the Spring or Fall. The only option we have been given is to register as a Camporee which would cost us about $75 per girl. We currently charge maximum $65 per girl so we would lose money having the camps.

Please support us and all troops in our Council by signing our petition directed at our Council to ask them to reconsider this policy change.

Thank you,