California Archives

For over 100 years, the Girl Scouts organization has been teaching life skills. Founded in 1912, the Girl Scouts of the United States of America offers leadership programs to girls aged 5-18 in STEM, the outdoors, and entrepreneurship. The organization boasts a membership of everyone from suffragettes to astronauts to opera singers to Supreme Court justices to gold-medal athletes. Beyond badges, today’s programs now reflect the girls it serves, focusing on diversity, equity, and, more importantly, inclusion.

We sat down with the CFO, Rich Ryan, to talk about how the GSHCC has helped shape its members’ lives, as it continues to grow, pivot, and evolve.

How many members strong is GSHCC?

Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC) serves 18 northern and central California counties and is a community with more than 12,000 girls and 6,000 adult members sharing in the Girl Scout movement locally.

The Girl Scouts celebrates its 109th year in existence. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

The Girl Scout mission has held steady since 1912: Girl Scouts builds girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. The girl-led, female environment allows girls to thrive and creates a safe space for girls of all ages, from grades K-12, to learn and grow. Being a Girl Scout helps girls across generations succeed in five key ways. As a Girl Scout, she:

Develops a strong sense of self
Displays positive values
Seeks challenges and learns from setbacks
Forms and maintains healthy relationships
Learns to identify and solve problems in her community

Because Girl Scouts is girl-led, we are always adapting to the interests and needs of modern girls. Over the past few years, we have expanded our focus on STEM programming through badge earning and hands-on experimentation at the GSHCC STEM Center + MakerSpaces. Outdoor opportunities have been elevated between Girl Scout resident camp, expeditions like backpacking and white water rafting, and high adventure troops. When girls get outside, they discover they can better solve problems and overcome challenges, develop leadership skills, care about protecting the environment, and more.

The Girls Scouts recently announced the addition of 28 new badges in STEM, entrepreneurship, and digital leadership. How do you believe these skills are helping to build our future leaders?

Through these badges, Girl Scouts as an organization is opening doors for girls that tend to be closed, largely due to outdated cultural biases. We’re showing young girls that they can be mathematicians, engineers, and CEOs, and we’re showing them HOW to do it.

Tell us more about the STEM Center + MakerSpaces.

In order to provide girls with empowering, hands-on STEM learning opportunities, Girl Scouts Heart of Central California opened the region’s first girl-led, girl-built STEM Center + MakerSpaces. Located in Sacramento and Modesto, these unique facilities host a variety of STEM, maker, and design-thinking activities that encourage girls to embrace the spirit of scientific discovery in their lives. The Mobile STEM Center + MakerSpace enables girls across our 18-county region to access these activities in their own communities.

Through a variety of cooperative learning opportunities and hands-on experimentation, girls hone STEM-related skills while having fun and gaining confidence. Girl Scouts has also introduced 30 new badges to power girls’ leadership and to prepare them for careers in emerging technologies and STEM fields like cybersecurity, mechanical engineering, robotics, computer science, and space exploration.

What is the Girls Scout Gold Award, and how does someone earn one?

The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award a girl can earn as a Girl Scout. High school-age Girl Scouts earn the Girl Scout Gold Award by identifying and addressing issues that are dear to them and driving lasting change in their communities and beyond. Gold Award Girl Scouts spend an average of 1-2 years on their projects, more specifically 80+ hours.

We cannot discuss the Girls Scouts without talking about the famous cookies. How did the pandemic affect The Girl Scout Cookie Program?

The Girl Scout Cookie Program—the largest entrepreneurial program for girls in the world—gives girls hands-on practice with a variety of skills, including goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics as they learn to think like entrepreneurs. Through the program, they learn from setbacks, collaborate with other girls to reach common goals, and, over time, take on more responsibility for their cookie business as they progress through Girl Scouts.

Of course, the pandemic threw troops’ plans for a loop! But nobody was better prepared to innovate than our girls. Girls used the pandemic as an opportunity to run a digital business. Digital had been a component of cookie selling in the past, but in 2021 girls found themselves learning about digital marketing and partnering with big names in the digital sphere, such as GrubHub. Local residents will definitely see more of a girl presence in the upcoming cookie season that was missing last year. But with all their new digital skills, girls are positioned to be more successful than ever this year.

What is your favorite Girl Scout cookie?

My favorite cookie has been the thin mint, but I’m looking forward to trying the new cookie for 2022 called Adventurefuls. It’s a brownie-inspired cookie with caramel-flavored crème and a hint of sea salt.

To learn more about the Girl Scouts Heart of Central California, visit their website at www.girlscoutshcc.org.

The California Museum opened its doors on September 9, 1998. As a private non-profit institution focused on California’s rich history and culture, the Museum was created to be the public showplace for contents of the California State Archives.

Former First Lady Maria Shriver began working with the Museum in 2003 to expand its vision and mission. In 2004, the “California’s Remarkable Women” exhibit opened as the first of her many collaborative efforts with the Museum. The Museum’s exhibitions have since then continued to highlight stories to reflect all aspects of California’s diverse population and culture, with a particular emphasis on the contributions of women and under-represented groups.

Today, Governor Jerry Brown and First Lady Anne Gust Brown are Honorary Co-Chairs of the California Museum and the California Hall of Fame. Both the Governor and First Lady continue to work with the Museum in the selection of California Hall of Fame inductees, bringing their appreciation of California history and the educational mission of the Museum to the forefront.

We met with the Museum’s Executive Director, Amanda Meeker, to learn more about and discuss this hidden gem located right in the heart of Sacramento.

The “California at Bat” Exhibit at the California Museum

When did the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts change its name to The California Museum? Why the change? Our name officially remains the California Museum for History, Women & the Arts, but in our day-to-day branding, we go by the shorter version for a couple of reasons. First, the official name is a bit of a mouthful! Second, people who are unfamiliar with the Museum often interpret the name as meaning that our exhibits are only about women. We do have a permanent exhibit celebrating California women, and we recognize the contributions of women and other historically underrepresented groups in all of our programming, but there are plenty of men depicted here as well. The name “California Museum” gives us wide latitude to address virtually any topic about California, past or present.

How many people visit the museum every year? Annual attendance is around 120,000 per year. Of those visitors, about half are students taking part in field trip programs.

What makes the California museum special? Only at the California Museum will you see the California Hall of Fame, an annual ceremony and exhibit where such legendary figures as Harrison Ford, Serena Williams, and Ronald Reagan are represented by artifacts personally loaned by the inductees or their families. The California Museum is also one of the few general museums to house a permanent exhibit about the wartime incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, and we present an annual 8-week education program in which docents who experienced the camps recount first-hand stories of their experiences during WWII.

The Museum offers a diverse set of works. What has been your favorite exhibit thus far? In the twenty years the California Museum has been open, we have presented many wonderful temporary exhibits on topics ranging from natural history to art, cultural history to sports, so it’s hard to choose a favorite. The most popular was our presentation of “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition.” This traveling exhibit from the Library of Congress featured historic documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address; Mary Todd Lincoln’s emeralds; and items the President had in his pockets the night of his assassination, including a Confederate dollar bill and a pair of eyeglasses broken at the temple that Lincoln had mended with a bit of string.

What are some upcoming exhibits? On display through December 30, 2018 is “California at Bat: America’s Pastime in the Golden State,” which covers California baseball from the Gold Rush to the present, featuring Joe DiMaggio’s New York Yankees rookie uniform, the cap Ted Williams wore the season he was the last MLB player to bat over .400, Jackie Robinson’s MVP award, and scores of other historical items. Additional upcoming exhibits in 2019 include “Before They Were Heroes: Sus Ito’s WWII Images,” which provides a rare look into the daily lives of the Japanese American soldiers whose heroic service made the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history; and “Dolores Huerta: Revolution in the Fields/Revolución en Los Campos,” a Smithsonian traveling exhibit that highlights the significant role of the iconic Latina leader in California’s farmworker movement.

The Unity Center at the California Museum – Photo by Robert Durell

SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 25, 2017 Children and adults visit the Unity Center's new exhibit at The California Museum, July 25, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Photo by Robert Durell

In 2017, the Museum launched the Unity Center which celebrates California’s diversity. Tell us more about this unique part of the Museum. The Unity Center initially was conceived in response to the 1999 “Summer of Hate” attacks in Northern California. Its interactive exhibits highlight leaders in the state’s rich civil rights history and encourage visitors to exercise their rights and stand up for the rights of others.

What is one thing that many people do not know about the Museum? Many think that the Museum is a State agency, but it’s actually a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It relies on the generosity of Museum patrons and receives most of its funding from grants and sponsorships. Admissions and Museum store sales also support our operations.

To learn more about The California Museum or how you can donate, visit their website at www.californiamuseum.org.

Tag: California

Beyond Badges: Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC)