It’s been a busy year for the Wellesley Girl Scouts, who recently held a successful fashion show to fund a service trip to Costa Rica. Don’t be surprised if the fashion focus continued during Wellesley’s Wonderful Weekend, when local scouts might be donning historical uniforms during the annual Veterans’ Parade, according to high school troop leader Belinda Harter.
Shown in this post are some of the way-back outfits, courtesy of the Wellesley Historical Society.
I asked Harter for fun historical and recent facts about the Wellesley Girls Scouts, and here is some what she came up with, emphasizing the huge contributions of many volunteers:
*I wasn’t sure if you knew that the non-profit Wellesley Community Center (which was built by the Grignafini family) has it built into its charter to support the Girl and Boy Scouts of Wellesley. The middle and high school Girl Scouts have been meeting there (free of charge!) forever – once a month on a Sunday evening.
>*Pam Grignafini has been almost singularly responsible for teaching every Girl Scout in Wellesley their canoeing skills. Each year, she shows up with the town’s scout-owned canoes and launches kindergarteners (Daisy’s) two at a time in a canoe (no adult) into Longfellow Pond – it’s an amazing thing to see!
*Town-wide Scouting for Food has been run almost single-handedly forever by Rula Salemeh for both the girl and boy scouts.
*The girl scouts are not all fun and camp fires! We teach and practice financial literacy and each scout has a account where they can accrue their earnings from cookie sales and other fund raisers. In turn, the girls can use this money of theirs to fund their girl scouts activities. For example, many of the girls traveling to Costa Rica have been saving money for 5 years for the trip.
*Today we have 8 high school girls conducting a “Journey,” which is a pre-requisite to the highest award possible in scouting – the Gold Award. This is clear evidence of how scouting has become stronger over the years. Last fall we awarded a single senior this award – she was only the 20th scout in our town’s history to achieve this distinction.
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