What’s it like being a girl in Boy Scouts? 500 girls ‘flock’ to Chattahoochee camp

Since the local Boy Scouts of America started accepting female scouts last fall, over 500 girls have “flocked” to the Chattahoochee Council, which serves nearly 5,000 young people in 15 counties in Georgia and Alabama, according to Scout Executive Juan Osorio.

One of those girls is Sienna Guzman, 7. She joined the Cub Scouts program at Lakewood Primary in Phenix City, Alabama as a kindergartner. She’s now in her second year in the program as a first grader.

According to her mother, Scarlet Guzman, Sienna has been around Boy Scouts of America programs since she was 9 months old and strapped to her mother’s back, watching as her older brother Daniel participated.

“She had honestly never missed one of his camp outs or meetings, all his awards. Even as a 3-year-old she did the 5-mile hike and she was amazing at it,” Guzman said. “She just loved everything brother did, so when she got the opportunity, she didn’t blink.”

Guzman said she has enjoyed being hands-on with her daughter’s troop as she progresses through the ranks.

“That’s been a really cool bonding experience, when they’re that little, one of the parents has to step up to be the leader so I was her leader for Lions and I’m the leader for Tigers too,” Guzman said.

Osorio said the change to allow girls in the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts programs is part of an effort by the organization to fit the needs of today’s families, which operate differently and have different challenges than families in the past.

“Research shows that millennial parents don’t want to drop off their children at a program but they want to stay there, even if its just sitting in the back of the room watching the kids be in the program,” Osorio said. “We were adding hurdles by only allowing boys in the program because the parents had to figure out what to do with their daughters.”

About 55 girls have joined the Boy Scouts program since last fall, with over 450 joining the Cub Scouts program. Osorio said Sienna Guzman’s story is not atypical.

“We don’t have an exact percentage, but some of these girls that we see are sisters of our current scouts in our program,” Osorio said. “Once we opened the door, the bulk of the girls that signed up immediately were sisters of the boys that were already in our program that had already seen their brother having fun and couldn’t wait to be in the program.”

Making accommodations

Because of that influx of girls to the program, the Chattahoochee Council is making some adjustments to one of its local summer camps in LaGrange, Camp Frank G. Lumpkin. A grant from the Callaway Foundation is allowing for the construction of four new restroom facilities at the camp as well as a new girls-only restroom, shower and changing facility at the pool.

The summer program provided at Camp Frank G. Lumpkin is primarily for the middle and high school aged scouts, but does draw campers from scout groups in other areas like Florida and Alabama and other councils in Georgia, Osorio said. With over 100 participants at any given week, last summer the camp’s restroom facilities had to be shared in a way that was often inconvenient.

“We had to designate certain restroom facilities for a specific gender or designate certain times, so we could say for example, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. it’s a boys-only restroom, and from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. it’s a girls-only restroom,” Osorio said.

The addition will allow easy access to gender-separated restrooms from anywhere in the camp.

“By us adding more restroom facilities, it allows us the opportunity to say now everywhere in camp we have restroom facilities for boys and girls and it doesn’t create a longer distance that you have to walk,” he said.

A groundbreaking on the site was held earlier this month, with a goal to have the new facilities up and running by the time camp starts back in June 2020.

Other improvements are in the works.

“We do have a master plan with additional construction opportunities, but we’re currently looking for funding for additional renovations and additions to Camp Frank G. Lumpkin,” he said. “We continue to evolve that property to ensure that we’re providing quality scouting programs to all youth involved in our program.”

The Chattahoochee Council also uses Camp Gallant, a primitive campsite adjacent to Camp Frank G. Lumpkin, and Camp Pine Mountain in West Point, which is used primarily for Cub Scouts and training. Improvements to accommodations are also planned at those camps.

“Camp Pine Mountain is turning 100 in 2022, and we will be doing a major fundraising effort to begin to develop new buildings and modify that camp to fit the needs of today’s families as well,” Osorio said.

Core lessons remain the same

While the acceptance of girls into the BSA programs may have created a need for more infrastructure, it hasn’t changed the core mission of the scouts or the lessons the organization hopes to provide.

Osorio said over 800 new members have joined the council since August 1. The Chattahoochee Council offers the program to boys and girls aged 6-21.

“Our curriculum is the same, our requirements are the same, everything is the same because none of our curriculum and none of our requirements are gender-specific per say,” Osorio said.

Girls and boys are taught separately from each other, however.

“When we do teach that curriculum in our year-round program, it is taught in gender-specific groups,” he said. “At the Cub Scout level which is elementary school, they break up by grade and gender for their advancement. In our scouts BSA program, which is middle and high school, they’re completely separate. They’re learning the same thing, but studies show that boys and girls learn differently.”

They may learn differently, but the lessons are impactful no matter the gender of the scout.

Daniel Guzman is 13 and in the eighth grade. Being a Boy Scout has taught him many practical skills and social skills that his mother says she hopes will help him, and her daughter, throughout their lives.

As a military family, the Cub Scouts program has helped their son make friends quickly when the family moves.

“It builds their social skills; they become more resilient and can bounce right back,” Scarlet Guzman said. “He’s done some speeches here for the scout office on their behalf, and I loved seeing how good he did in front of a group of adults.”

Scouts has also taught him life skills, such as how to cook, sew a button, fix things and even a little bit of plumbing.

“We bought a new house and he painted his own room, no questions asked,” Guzman said. “So he learned a lot of just life skills that are going to further him in life.”

This story was originally published October 28, 2019 at 5:00 AM.