SuburbanCares: Supporting Our Girl Scouts to Become Tomorrow’s Female Leaders

Maury Prentiss, Operations Manager from our Fairfield Maine Customer Service Center has been volunteering his time to the Winslow Maine Girl Scout troop for the past 5 years. He manages three troops ranging from 4^th and 5^th graders to junior high school girls, for a total of 27 girls. He and his wife share the responsibility of the 4^th and 5^th graders, but his wife also has a Daisy troop of kindergarteners. Maury is on the Service Team (the board) for the Girl Scouts in his local area and is a learning facilitator, where he conducts all the trainings from New Leader Training to Camp Training to Money Matters Training.

His 4^th and 5^th grade troops have learned to run their own meetings. They take turns presenting materials and running the meeting. “The best part is I now have a group of 23 girls – 4^th and 5^th graders -that can hold, lead and run a successful meeting with no help from me at all. All but 2 of my girls are confident enough to speak in front of a large group and look as professional as a CEO of a company…. Many adults struggle with this.” Guest speakers often attend these meetings, specifically women in business and women business owners. His troop meetings are led by the girls and they set the goals for their troop. Their goal for this year is to raise money for a 3 day/2 night trip to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. To help them achieve that goal, Maury helped them determine the cost of the trip and how many cookies they need to sell to raise the money they need. Each girl will need to sell 400 boxes of cookies plus 1,000 boxes from their cookie booths.

They have traveled to Boston and spent the night in the Museum of Science and they have seen Disney on Ice. This year they are planning a trip to an aquarium, a zoo and a museum called Wales, Sales, and Animal Tales for 3 days 2 nights. His goal for the troops is to make all of their trips fun, educational and memorable. After their trip to see Disney on Ice they had the opportunity to go back stage and learn about the setup/teardown of the sets, the wardrobe and how many trucks were needed to move everything. “If it were not for the program, some of my kids would never get the chance to go to these places because their families may not be able to afford it.”  Maury’s troops also give back to the community by cooking and serving meals to veterans at the American Legion, donating to the local Fire and Police Departments as well as the homeless shelter and Meals on Wheels programs. His troops also make cards for Hospice patents for Christmas and Valentines Day.

“The hardest part is letting them fail so we can all learn from it. Without failure they will never take chances and succeed. Good leaders are risk takers! … Some of the girls need a positive male role model in their life and some don’t have a dad at all for various reasons. I am there for every one of them like they are my own.”  #SuburbanCares