Girl Scout Teens Unite to Plan Conference

With many events, committees must be formed to ensure every aspect of the function is planned with careful consideration and detail. The same can be said for the 2011 Teen Conference. What makes this event unique is that the conference is planned by teens for teens. Typical meetings include Central Texas girls discussing what is important to their peers and what needs to be done to implement their ideas.

The GSCTX Marketing Department has had the pleasure of working with a group of four girls to plan and create the promotional materials for the upcoming conference. Under our guidance, Annie L., Alison S., Clara S. and Belle T. have been able to take the lead on implementing many of the projects that are usually given to seasoned professionals. The girls are currently creating the event logo along with developing content for the website, social media, TV, radio and print materials.

Join us February 19, 2011 at the UT Alumni Center to celebrate the hard work of these girls and experience a day that can help any high school girl get ready to take on the next stage of her life.

Photo: GSCTX Graphic Designer Larisa Chavarria guides Annie L. on designing the logo.

Girl Scout Incorporates Love of Art into Career

Art is my passion; it has been in my blood for a long time. I love creating, experimenting and storytelling through imagery. It allows me to put my ideas into something concrete. The great thing about being imaginative is that I don’t see things as they are, as finite ideas. I see them as the possibilities they can become. A blank surface, whether it be a canvas, drawing pad or computer screen is not intimidating to me. It is a starting ground to make something beautiful and great.

When I was presented with the big, scary question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, I chose graphic design. I was able to incorporate my passion into a marketable career through my education at Western Kentucky University. In school, I was able to learn a variety of studio arts, which in the long run made me a more prepared Graphic Designer.

After college, I made my way to Austin, Texas and was hired by Girl Scouts. I love my job. When I come to work, I get to play with colors, photos, fonts and images. I design and produce all the print materials our council distributes. I make posters, newsletters, brochures, online camp guides, calendars and a whole array of other projects. Some days I attend Girl Scout events to take photographs and interact with the girls. I have a lot of fun bringing life and color to our materials in order to make the experience more fun for each girl. Through art and graphic design, you can make your personal mark in the world.

To view my designs, please visit my website and the GSCTX website.

- Larisa Chavarria

Girls' Respect Conference: Registration Special

World travel, social media, health, music, self-respect, college admissions, dating - that's what real high school girls are talking about.

Girl Scouts of Central Texas is proud to announce that on June 12, we're going to talk about all that and more with hundreds of the state's high school girls.

Planned by a committee of high school girls, the Girls' Respect Conference is especially for teenage girls in Texas. It is all about the things they care about, are interested in and need to talk about.

In hands-on workshops, girls will live out the conference's theme of "create, define, be yourself." Each girl will pick her workshops that day, giving her an experience that is as unique as she is. With dozens of options, the conference can be molded to the interests of any and every girl. Parents are also invited to attend and will have a special adult track. Please note, to give everyone the best and most tailored experience, girls and parents will not participate in workshops together.

This week, as an added bonus, the first 100 girls who register will receive a free conference t-shirt. Register now.

Connect with the Girls' Respect Conference

• Check out who else is coming by visiting the Facebook event.
• Follow updates about the conference on Twitter using the tag #GRC10
• Scope out Texas State University as part of your conference experience by staying in the university's dorms on Friday night. Sign up to stay overnight.

-Cheryl Black
GRC Staff Committee

Free t-shirts are limited to the first 100 girls to register during the week of April 19-24.

Going Green with a Smile

“Thank you for helping us learn how to recycle. I will soon call my family in Minnesota and in Ecuador to start recycling. I admire you for helping the earth.”

– Cheryl, 3rd grade, Great Oaks Elementary

When I first began my Girl Scout Gold Award Project about going green, I did not anticipate that the culmination of my project would be to share my findings with younger children in my local community, but I now believe that it has become one of the most precious outcomes of my undertaking. My initial aspiration for my project was to raise environmental awareness in a unique way after witnessing the eye-rolling from my classmates that accompanied the usual leaflets, brochures, and packets about “Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling!” I wanted to educate people about ways to help the environment that would blend easily into everyday life, while interweaving my approach with another passion of mine – art.

I began by organizing an outdoor bazaar open to the Austin community that communicated the theme “Going Green…It’s Easy!” I collaborated with a variety of local and national organizations, such as Austin Water Utility, the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, City of Austin Solid Waste Services, Keep Austin Beautiful, and Ecology Action to set up booths at the event to educate and provide information about their services to visitors. Guests loved the “Keep Austin Beautiful” bumper stickers and low-flow shower heads that these organizations distributed along with their environmental expertise.

To add my personal touch to the bazaar, I created interactive artistic booths that focused on the fresh concept of “upcycling,” a sustainability method in which waste materials are used to create new products. My art-centered upcycling booths displayed arts and crafts made out of recyclables and other miscellaneous objects, and provided the visitors a chance to exercise their own creative talents in fashioning new things from used items.

Through the great response I received for my upcycling ideas, I became conscious that hands-on involvement is an amazing way to introduce people to the creative nature of sustainability or “Going Green.” I then decided to take my project a step further and developed a brochure that provided instructions for crafts that can be made from used objects. I mailed this upcycling brochure to the art teachers at various public schools in my community as a way for them to foster environmental awareness in youth through art lessons. They were very enthusiastic about my idea of approaching environmentalism through art and many of the teachers incorporated the upcycled crafts into their curricula. Within weeks, I was invited to visit elementary school art classes and events. I discovered that the most fulfilling part of my Gold Project was interacting with these elementary school students. The opportunity to share my knowledge of the green movement and passion for art with children energized me to continue my involvement in this cause.

Though the environmental movement has many facets, I have found an aspect within it that has special significance to me. In order to continue reaching out to youth about environmental topics, I have become involved in the national Girl Scout “Forever Green” Community Action Project, a pilot project in which I will guide groups of girls to help them create and carry out their own environmental advocacy projects.

As I continue to educate children and other Girl Scouts about the benefits of being green, I realize that the many notes I receive illustrated with smiley-faces and renderings of the earth represent exactly what I strive for: to enrich environmental awareness for others by adding a smile and individuality to the process.

-Dipona, Girl Scout Ambassador

For her project, Dipona has been recognized as a 2009 Silver Service Award Winner by the Wildlife Conservation Society. 

Let’s make a membranophone!

We’ll be making music with membranophones at the upcoming Girl Scout sleepover, Making Music, at Austin Children’s Museum on Nov. 20-21. Register today through GSCTX. View the Sleepover and Brownie Try-It Workshop schedules.

Hi, my name is Priscilla and I’m the blog intern for Austin Children’s Museum. I’m going to show you how to make a cool musical instrument!

Did you know you can craft a membranophone out of household items and recycled containers? A membranophone is any musical instrument that produces sound through a vibrating membrane, such as a drum or a kazoo.

Audrey, the Programs Coordinator at the Austin Children’s Museum, decided to share her instructions with me.

What you’ll need:

• Plastic water bottle or yogurt cup
• Scissors or box cutter
• Drinking straw
• Tape
• Paper towel tube or rolled up sheet of paper
• Rubber band
• Balloon or latex glove

What to do:

1. Poke a straw-sized hole at the top of the water bottle label, or in the side of the yogurt cup.

2. Cut the water bottle in half. Skip this step if you’re using a yogurt cup.
3. Roll up a sheet of paper into a tube and tape it together, or use a paper towel tube. The tube needs to fit inside the top opening of the water bottle. If you are using a yogurt cup, use the box cutter to cut a hole in the bottom that is big enough to snuggly fit around a paper towel tube.

4. Cut two or three holes into the paper tube.
5. Cut off the end of a balloon to make a sheet of rubber. Put the sheet of rubber on the top of the yogurt cup VERY TIGHTLY. You can also use latex gloves instead of a balloon.

6. Place the paper tube inside the yogurt cup and tape it to the cup so no air leaks out. Make sure the tube is far enough inside the yogurt cup so that it touches the balloon. This is very important because this is how the vibrations are made.

7. Insert the straw into the little hole you poked into the bottle

8. If you want to make extra sure the balloon is sealed, secure the balloon with a rubber band around the yogurt cup.
9. Now blow into the straw. If it doesn’t make a sound, adjust the tension of the balloon membrane so that it’s tighter. Again, make sure the tube is touching the membrane.
10. Place your fingers over the holes in the tube to change the sound

So how does a membranophone work?

The balloon serves as the vibrating membrane in the membranophone. When you blow into the straw, the air waves cause the balloon membrane to vibrate. The vibrations then travel down the paper tube to make a sound.

Similar to when you blow into your membranophone, when you beat a drum, the covering of the drum (the membrane) vibrates and makes a sound!

So what happens to the pitch when you cover some of the holes in the tube?

Pitch is how we hear sound as high or low.

The sound waves create an air column when they travel down and out the tube. Since vibrations slow down after time, the longer the air column, the slower the vibrations.

When you cover the holes, you are creating a shorter air column. This makes the vibrations happen faster. Faster vibrations produce a higher pitch and slower vibrations produce a lower pitch. Check out other fun crafts and science experiments at the Austin Children’s Museum blog.

-Priscilla, Austin Children's Museum

Creativity at Work

"Our imagination is boundless. In a split second we can imagine an incredible number of things. To give form to what is imagined takes great creative powers … Creativity is giving form to imagination." -Dr. Fereydoon Family, PhD, Prominent Physicist

Creativity Defined

The simplest definition of creativity is laughably straightforward: creativity is “the ability to create.” For artists, whether they are performing artists, visual artists, or writers, creativity is much more than just an “ability to create.” Creativity is the key to presenting great art: it involves inspiration, imagination, and innovation. In the poetic words of Jaques De’Ambois, former dancer of New York City Ballet and Artistic Director of the National Dance Institute, “It’s your pulse, it’s your heartbeat, it’s your breathing. It’s the rhythms of your life. It’s the expression in time and movement of happiness and joy and sadness and energy. It’s a venting of energy. It’s extraordinary, and that’s common to all the cultures and it’s common to all individuals.”

Creativity in the Dance World

Dancers must use creativity in a variety of settings: auditions, classes, rehearsals, and performances. Ballet Austin Trainee and former Girl Scout Brownie Erica Ducoing relates that she has been asked to creatively “improvise” (make up a dance on the spot!) during auditions for professional ballet companies. Trainee and former Brownie Michelle Howie shares that creativity is a must in her modern class at Ballet Austin: “[Our teacher] pushes us to improvise, and it sometimes feels awkward, but it’s good for us!”

Be Creative!

In whatever form your creativity takes, (whether you dance, sing, act, draw, paint, sculpt, write, or play music), you can apply the following advice:

1. Be inventive. Ballet Austin Trainee Michelle Howie gives this encouragement to creative Girl Scouts: “Don’t be afraid to push the envelope, and don’t give up!”
2. Be true to yourself. Margot Fonteyn, a luminous British ballerina, astutely said: “Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.”
3. Enjoy yourself. Mikhail Baryshnikov, that storied Russian dancer, gives this excellent advice: “The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”

Ballet Austin partners with the Girl Scouts to provide creative ways for girls to learn more about dance. Join us for one of our Community Education programs, including opportunities to see inspiring in-studio rehearsal viewings and participate in engaging dance workshops. Learn more about Ballet Austin’s upcoming performances and class offerings by visiting www.balletaustin.org.

-Sarah Rostoker,  Ballet Austin Community Education Dept.

Right + Left = Whole Person

In 1960, an American psychobiologic, Roger W. Speery, developed the right brain, left brain concept. His theory was that people have and use both sides of their brains, but one side of the brain is more dominate. Sperry concluded that a person who is right brain dominate, processes information in an intuitive way. They look at the whole picture and then determine what parts apply. Left brain dominate people process information in an analytical and sequential way. They look at the pieces to determine the whole.

Girl Scouts aspires to stimulate both sides of the brain, through our 4 new focus areas:

• Girls Go Green
• Girls Go Tech 
• Girls Grow Strong
  
• Girls Go Creative

Creative arts (both visual and performing arts) ignite and engage the right side of the brain. They stimulate and help incorporate the "whole person," not just the logical sequential side. We are learning that music may help you with your math skills and art may stimulate creative writing.

With the whole brain stimulated, we are able to creatively solve logical problems and logically solve creative, abstract problems. It truly is key to stimulate and develop both sides of our brain in order to succeed in today’s fast-paced global society.

The research is there but even without the support of facts and figures, Girl Scouts knows that the arts are fun, engaging, stimulating, physical and down right enjoyable.

Do you cheer, dance, play a sport, draw, write or play an instrument? Are you a painter, a sculptor, a singer or craft-maker? Share the benefits of your right brain power!

-Juanita Budd

Ladies & Gentlemen, allow me to introduce…

Girls today have instant access to a world wide pool of knowledge that must be filtered and used wisely.

GSCTX is assisting girls in navigating through this process by identifying four program focus areas. These focus areas ensure that our programs are the premier leadership experience for girls. The focus areas were selected based upon what we know girls need to succeed today and tomorrow as well as what the needs are of the local and global community. By discovering, connecting and taking action within these four areas, girls will be armed with the skills they need to navigate through life and positively impact the world around them.

The GSCTX’s four focus areas are…

Girls Go Tech

As technology flattens the world and connects us across the globe, Girl Scout programs equip girls to compete and win in school and in their future careers. Through fun, mentally-stimulating activities, girls learn practical skills, adaptability and problem-solving, key components to gain the competitive edge in this fast changing technology driven world.

Girls Go Creative

Self expression through the visual, performing and literary arts helps provide life balance, fosters creative thinking and strengthens problem solving abilities. The arts experience in Girl Scouts allows for innovation and personal reflection while providing fun and entertainment for others.

Girls Grow Strong

Activities related to personal responsibility, self sufficiency and courage empower girls to care for themselves and lead others. Girl Scouts learn about ethical leadership and community trusteeship through a variety of programs. By participating in leadership and community service activities, girls build strong minds, bodies and character. Girls learn that “to make the world a better place” is more than words; it is a commitment to a cause greater than one’s self.

Girls Go Green

We must be responsible stewards of our planet in order to live healthy and productive lives and to maintain that opportunity for future generations. Girl Scouting gives girls the platform to learn, practice and teach what it means to respect the environment and wisely use our limited resources. (Check out our new program, Forever Green, to get a glimpse of exactly how we’re going green.)

-Etta Moore