Nicole Plegge, Fund Development Manager
I am the proud mom of a Daisy. For the past two years, I – or my husband who’s grown accustomed to being surrounded by XX chromosomes – have joined our six-year-old, Mia, on Girl Scout adventures to skating rinks, swimming pools and Camp Torqua, and swelled with pride over her troop’s community service efforts.
Getting my daughter into a troop was easy – we live in suburbia where there’s a variety of community resources and volunteers. But for hundreds of girls in southern Illinois, Girl Scouting would be out of their reach if it wasn’t for the generosity of incredible donors who made a financial gift to GSSI this year.
With your support, GSSI provides leadership and educational programming to 1,200 girls in inner-city schools and public housing complexes at no cost to their families. In addition, we deliver girl-specific programming at the Madison County Detention Center to help empower 70 female juvenile offenders to make positive lifestyle changes. Overall, more than $150,000 in financial assistance is provided by GSSI throughout our region to ensure every girl has the opportunity to become a Girl Scout.
Your generous donations also help maintain our six camps across the region, increase our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) efforts, and keep our programming costs low, which is especially important for a family like mine whose curious six-year-old wants to try anything and everything.
Girl Scouts has provided Mia more than access to fun activities and educational programs. The organization has welcomed her into a family of fellow Girl Scouts, amazing troop leaders and caring volunteers who go above and beyond to help one another. Yet, until I started working as a development manager at GSSI last month, I never realized how the big that family is – it’s truly a community of 14,000 families, 5,000 volunteers, and countless caring individuals, companies and organizations dedicated to helping our daughters achieve the incredible.
On behalf of GSSI, the 14,000 girls we serve, and my own little Girl Scout, I thank you for your support of our girls this past year and hope you’ll join us for incredible things to come in 2013!
