By Keya Nijhawan
Here’s my question. Why don’t people give out Thin Mints, Samoas, or Tagalongs when kids knock on their doors on Halloween? After all, October 31st is also Girl Scout Founder’s Day.
According to the National Day website, October 31st celebrates not only the founder but all the ways the Scouts have benefited girls. It is a day for girls to reflect on their hopes and dreams, a time for girls to realize all they can do and the differences they can make in the world.
The Girl Scouts organization has made it possible for girls to be “something more significant, bolder, and more daring than we ever thought possible”(National Day). This mindset was made more possible for girls on March 12, 1912, when Girl Scouts was founded by Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah, Georgia.
Low put together service programs, outdoor activities, and enrichment programs for the first-ever Girl Scout troop. This troop consisted of 18 girls in total.
However, in 1912, Girl Scouts was not Girl Scouts yet; it had to morph into something bigger, just like all good organizations. Its original name was Girl Guides of America. Even with a different name, the intentions were the same. As described by Girl Scouts of the USA, Girl Scouts was designed to aid girls in finding their full potential, relate to others, develop values to guide their actions, provide a solid foundation for decision-making, and ultimately contribute to the improvement of society.
The importance of Girl Scouts clearly caught on because by 1920, there were close to 70,000 members, and today we have around 2.5 million members.
You might be as curious as I was about why Girl Scout Founder’s Day coincides with Halloween. Well, a quick Google search turned up the answer: Low was born on October 31st.
Since I had never seen anything about this day, I began to wonder if any Girl Scouts knew about it. So I asked senior Gabby Tobin, and she said, “I didn’t, but thanks for letting me know.”
This was surprising to me because Gabby has achieved the Gold Award, which means she has been a Girl Scout for a long time. She told me her Gold Award was called “For Math’s Sake: Peer-To-Peer Videos.” She created a series of 13 bilingual math videos based on the 6th-grade math curriculum in 2020.
While she is proud of what she accomplished with her project, she was still disappointed that she didn’t know about Girl Scout Founder’s Day. So spread the word and post the hashtag #GirlScoutFoundersDay on social media.
And when Halloween season rolls around again next year, consider indulging in a good old-fashioned Thin Mint to celebrate the young girls working to improve the community in honor of the woman whose birthday they have probably forgotten.
