LOUISVILLE, Ken. (WAVE/NBC) – Starting February 1, 2019, girls can enroll in the Boy Scouts’ program newly renamed Scouts BSA.
The Boy Scouts of America is now welcoming girls to participate in the same activities and leadership opportunities open to boys since 1910.
Scouts BSA participant Natalie Young said, “Sometimes I worry a little bit that the guys think us girls are weak.”
More than 20 girls joined 17-year-old Girl Scout Natalie Young in Louisville to sign up and prove there is nothing frail about them.
Scout Olivia Harris said, “I wanted to do the camping and all those activities.”
Girls are no longer limited to what they are expected to learn. Instead, they can choose their own path. Natalie decided to keep growing with the Girl Scouts and get opportunities she never had before with the boys. She explained, “There’s a more leadership focus here whereas in Girl Scouts there’s a more girl empowerment focus.”
Scout executive Jason Pierce stated, “This is a moment we’ll look back at 100 years from now where we’ll say that was the tipping point with a program that we know changes lives.”
Pierce said the Scout BSA launch was all about moving the girls off the sidelines and onto the scout field. “These young ladies now will get a chance to go to summer camp and do the same cool things that maybe their brother, their uncle, their grandfather got to do,” he said.
The Boys and Girls Scouts will stay separate. But the all-girls troops will pledge and do the same activities as the boys. That’s an idea some former Cubs had to adjust to.
After hearing how important it was to the girls in his life, Scout BSA member Riley Adams says now he’s excited to give knot lessons and learn from the ladies. “Whatever they have to teach me,” Adams chuckled.
The girls are ready to prove that anything the boys can do, they can do too.
Scout Natalie Young said, “Here to show that we are not weak and we can do everything that they can do and we’re here to have just as much fun as them.”
The Cub Scouts, the group for younger children, ages five through ten, opened up to girls in June of 2018.
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