Juliette Gordon Low presents a badge to a Girl Scout
What began as a gathering of 18 girls in Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912, has grown into one of the best-known organizations in the country — Girl Scouts of the USA.
The group’s original organizer was Juliette Gordon Low, affectionately known as “Daisy.” Her inspiration came from the Girl Guides Association, the counterpart to The Boy Scouts Association for girls in the U.K., as well as a 1911 meeting with Boy Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell. She envisioned an organization that would give girls opportunities to build courage, confidence and character at a time when their roles in society were still limited. Her idea spread quickly: By 1920, there were almost 70,000 members of the Girl Scouts.
Badges have been part of Girl Scouting since the beginning, and they remain one of its most beloved traditions. The earliest badges covered a wide range of skills — from cooking and first aid to civics, athletics and even dairy work — reflecting the needs and expectations of the era. Over time, however, the program evolved. Today, girls can earn badges in robotics, environmental stewardship, financial literacy and digital arts, among many other modern fields.
The organization started selling cookies in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Okla., baked and sold homemade sugar cookies in their high school cafeteria as a service project. By 1951, Thin Mints, Trefoils and Do-si-dos became the first standardized cookies.
As Girl Scouts of the USA expanded, badges also became a symbol of inclusivity, with troops of African-American, American-Indian and Mexican-American girls forming as early as the late 1910s and early 1920s, followed by broader desegregation efforts in the 1950s and 1960s.
Although troop sizes vary, it’s estimated there are roughly 2 million Girl Scouts members nationwide, including about 1.1 million girls and hundreds of thousands of adult volunteers.