The Girl Scouts of Orange County is building a $3.9 million Leadership Center in Newport Beach as part of an interactive program intended to give its scouts confidence and career opportunities.
The building is scheduled to open early next year in Marina Park overlooking Newport Bay, and along with the organization’s new $1 million Inspire program, it’s designed to help introduce girls to new experiences and begin exploring careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, said the Irvine-based nonprofit’s chief executive, Nancy Nygren.
“Most girls decide by eighth grade whether they love or leave math and science,” she said, and most leave what are called STEM classes because of peer pressure or because those classes often are considered in American culture to be “for boys only.”
“Girls’ learning levels are affected in mixed company,” she said. Studies show that girls lack confidence when boys are in the classroom, and that can inhibit their learning.
The boys can make fun of the girls, and the girls may be afraid to speak up in class out of fear that they may sound stupid in front of the boys, Nygren said, pointing out that only about 24% of STEM-based jobs are filled by women.
Yet females make up about half of the population, and STEM jobs are the driving force behind the U.S. economy, she said.
“We really need 100% of the problem solvers working in our county and country.”
$5M
The local organization’s executive leadership intends for the new building and program to provide an encouraging environment that will allow girls to explore their interests in STEM and consider a variety of related careers. The organization is raising $5 million to fund the program, Nygren said, and is offering permanent building naming rights to a sponsor who donates $2.5 million.
All scouts will be exposed to the program, whether or not they’ve already developed strong STEM interests, with the idea that providing a setting to pursue such interests might open up more girls to the idea.
Girl Scouts of Orange County has about 21,500 scouts from across the county ranging in age from 5 to 18.
Its Inspire program could be expanded nationally if it encourages girls to take STEM classes, consider jobs in related professions and begin to create lasting changes in their communities.
The program allows for two sets of 20 scouts with five adults to reserve free overnight stays at the 6,100-square-foot building.
Part of the plan is for the scouts to arrive after the school day, settle in, and then watch some of the 27 videos it produced featuring successful professional women, such as Vernice Armour, the first female African-American combat pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps, or Jane Buchan, chief executive of Irvine-based hedge fund Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co.
Other videos feature Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and Renee Bergeron, vice president of cloud computing at Ingram Micro.
“Girls can’t become what they don’t see,” Nygren said.
The scouts during breaks in the videos will discuss the skills needed to be successful in the featured industries. Discussion exercises vary according to the girls’ ages.
The videos are meant to complement traditional troop visits to meet business and community leaders.
Many visits, Nygren said, are difficult to schedule around the girls’ school obligations, limited travel funds or speakers’ hectic schedules.
Making Friends, Teams
The girls can start to envision themselves in their desired professions through other planned exercises, such as creating computer avatars of themselves and equipping the images with the items needed for that line of work, such as a stethoscope.
The goal is for the girls to begin considering their lives as STEM professionals, Nygren said. Older scouts who participate in the program will have the opportunity of returning to lead the discussion with the younger girls.
Scouts also will be encouraged to explore the city of Newport Beach in a group with a chaperone.
“They can walk the peninsula, meet business owners, see local problems, such as traffic or pollution, then learn to solve those problems at home,” said Lara Chard, the senior program specialist who created the Inspire program.
The community problem-solving exercise is designed to help the girls learn to work in teams, identify the cause of a problem and focus on developing a solution—professional skills all girls will need later in life.
National Interest
Nygren and Chard refined the program using test groups in Boston to take advantage of facilities there. The testing particularly pointed out the viability of one aspect of the program: its problem-solving component.
Nygren said one mother called after her non-scout kids participated in the video exercises, then wanted to design posters to spread the word about electricity conservation in their homes and at their schools.
“It was wonderful that we had that effect on children in Boston who weren’t Girl Scouts,” she said.
That kind of activist urge isn’t new among local scouts, and Nygren said she wants to further cultivate it through the new program.
A scout troop in Orange County, for instance, last year wrote to children’s drink maker Capri Sun in an effort to reduce the plastic components in the drink pouches, said Tom Olivas, director of facility operations who’s overseeing construction of the Leadership Center.
“The girls were walking along the beach after visiting the (former) program center,” Olivas said in reference to the Neva B. Thomas Girl Scout Program Center, which was built in 1949 on the site of the new Leadership Center. It was used primarily for local troop meetings before being demolished several years ago when the city decided to renovate the adjacent park area. It offered to rent the land to the organization for $1 a year, creating an opportunity for the Girl Scouts to construct the multipurpose building.
Olivas said the OC scouts “saw a lot plastic straws and wrappers from the drink boxes littering the beach.” So they “wrote to the drink maker asking it to reduce the plastic components to solve the littering problem,” he said.
The girls’ effort was an example of the organization’s philosophy of working to “eliminate the cause of a problem,” Nygren said.
The 11- and 12-year-old scouts’ troop leader sent the design of an all-in-one straw and container to Capri Sun and its parent company, Kraft Foods in Northfield, Ill., said Julie Weeks, Girl Scouts of Orange County’s vice president of marketing and communications.
Kraft and Capri Sun asked the scouts to evaluate a package already in development that eliminated the straw, Weeks said.
The girls were excited to engage with the company and participate in the process of helping change its packaging.
Play Time, Too
Scouts aren’t expected to work during their entire visit to Balboa Peninsula.
The Leadership Center will have six 80-inch video screens, numerous computer tablets, showers and a full-sized kitchen.
The girls can watch movies or play games inside or make s’mores at the outdoor fireplace on the building’s 2,000-square-foot patio overlooking the bay.
“Even if the girls never left the building,” Chard said, “they would have an enjoyable overnight trip.”
Nygren and Chard said, though, that they hope the girls will be encouraged to explore the area.
“For many of the girls, this trip to the Leadership Center will be the first time any of them have seen the beach or have been away from home,” Nygren said.
Very few children travel outside of their home city, she said. “A child from Santa Ana, for example, only knows Santa Ana, because that is the only place they have seen in their young life.”
The surrounding area encourages girls to explore the area and consider their choices, she added.
The Leadership Center, being next to the city playground on the Balboa Peninsula, will allow scouts to use paddleboards, kayaks or participate in community sailing programs in the bay. The Newport Municipal Beach is about a block south.
The center, the messages from successful women, and the Balboa Peninsula all create a “safe environment for the girls to explore their options, learn from each other, develop self-esteem and leave with a higher confidence level,” Nygren said.
“That is what they learn as a Girl Scout.”
