This morning, my 10-year-old daughter and I went to a Girl Scout Skills Day that was put on by our local Service Unit. Unfortunately, the Service Unit had to plan everything and provide all the resources themselves; for whatever reason, our local council refused to help. In all, about 100 girls from our service unit came to the event.

The event itself was a little disorganized, but I think the girls learned some very valuable skills. For the girls in the Junior level, they learned some knot tying, orienteering, went through a presentation put together by REI about "Leave No Trace," knife safety, and how to safely start and put out a campfire.

By the end of the event, my daughter got a piece of rope to practice knot tying at home, a keychain from REI, a sheet from REI about "Leave No Trace" and the 10 Essentials, a whistle (to be used in an emergency if she becomes lost while in the out of doors), a patch, and small Ziploc bag with pretzels for a snack.

My daughter will be heading off for a Girl Scout encampment trip in a few weeks, and I think what she learned today will really come in handy. But I am a little disappointed that our local council didn't provide any help or resources for the event.

This isn't the kind of activity that any Council would get involved in though. Councils do activities for their Council, meaning all girls in the Council can attend. Neighborhoods do separate events, like your Skills Day, for girls in their neighborhood. The Council limits its help for neighborhood events to advice and, in some cases, information and supplies owned by the Council. If they did more, the event would then have to be open to all girls in the Council, which often would then be unmanageable.

It sounds like your neighborhood did a great job!

A nice thing that our Service Unit did was to bring in some help from the Boy Scouts. A Cub Scout Cubmaster helped to lead the orienteering station. A Boy Scout leader and a Boy Scout were involved with the fire and knives station.

As the co-leader for our troop commented, it was nice to see the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts working together.