ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In late March and early April, Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland gave young ladies across Southwest Kansas, including some in Liberal, a chance to receive five extra months of membership fun.
GSKH Troop Engagement Specialist Michelle Daniels hosted several Dive Into Girl Scouts spring recruitment events throughout the area, including one last Friday in Liberal, and she said all girls going into kindergarten in fall 2025 were eligible to join.
“We do early renewal, and we also do what’s called extended year membership,” she said. “You pay the membership price, and it covers you from now until September 2026.”
Girls who participated in Dive Into Girl Scouts had fun exploring the ocean through games and activities. Daniels said the activities were definitely female-focused, but were likewise educational.
“We’re talking about how we can clean up the ocean, talking about the different animals, exposure to those things, but it’s also things we can customize, letting the girls know they can ultimately make the decision for it,” she said.
Activities at the Liberal Dive Into Girl Scouts included an ocean cleanup worksheet, an ocean animal crab walk and a coloring sheet based on the Disney movie, “The Little Mermaid.” Daniels said those who came to Friday’s event were already Girl Scout members, and she said in normal recruitments, she gives young ladies a good jump into the scouting experience, adding she also has chance to talk to parents about signing their children up, as well as volunteering.
Daniels said girls signing up at the Dive Into Girl Scout events were already starting their renewal, and any girl who signs up between now and May 1 will get a free T-shirt.
“Adults are able to purchase those T-shirts as well. If they sign up before July 15, they are able to register to attend what we call Midnight Madness,” she said. “This year, they are doing an overnight at Wichita Sports Forum, which is pretty awesome. I just got started with spring recruitment with spring break, but it’s going good. I wanted to give girls the opportunity and give troop leaders a bit of a break after the stress of cookies and have me come do a party with them instead of them having to stay the whole meeting too.”
Tuesday, April 22, GSKH is hosting Read With a Girl Scout at the Haskell County Library in Sublette. Daniels said this is an event area scouts wanted to do.
“We have some leftover cookies our troop has purchased, and we want to give back to the community a little bit and show we care and we’re here,” she said. “You don’t have to be a girl who’s signing up for Girl Scouts. You don’t have to be a girl at all. Kids of all ages are welcome. We’ll enjoy some milk and cookies. We’ll have a craft. Our Girl Scouts will be the ones reading the books, not the leaders.”
Girl Scout cookie sales recently wrapped up, and in Southwest Kansas, Daniels said sales were nothing short of amazing.
“We surpassed the council’s expectations,” she said. “We had lots of girls who are winning big prizes. One of the girls here is what we call an Elite Entrepreneur and she not only gets to go to the event the first weekend in May called Blast Off May, but she also gets to go to the overnight experience, which is at Worlds of Fun.”
Originally, some area Girl Scouts were planning in June to visit Savannah, Ga., the home of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Lowe, but with a recent cancellation, that trip is no longer happening. However, Daniels said young ladies will make a trip that will be just as, if not more, exciting this summer.
“We are going to New York City,” she said. “It’s not a total loss. We use a company called Explorer Fest. It’s not necessarily a Girl Scout-based program, but it’s an educational-based travel company. We were going to meet up with another Girl Scout troop from another council, and they ended up canceling. They switched our reservations. We are going to New York City instead.”
Daniels said while girls will not get to see Lowe’s hometown, they will still get to visit museums and other attractions in the Big Apple.
“We’ll get to go to behind the scenes on a Broadway show,” she said. “We’ll get to go to Radio City Music Hall and get a behind the scenes tour. We will go to the Statue of Liberty. It’ll be fun.”
Unlike the Savannah trip, which she called more laid back, Daniels said the NYC trip will be more people oriented.
“We will handle it, and my daughter’s super excited about it,” she said.
As for the rest of 2025, Daniels said GSKH has plenty of fun events planned starting with this weekend’s Girl Scout Grand Prix and April’s Volunteer Appreciation Month.
“We’re having marches everywhere,” she said. “We have an awesome training. It’s open to everybody, but a lot of the Liberal people are going to Garden City to get CPR certified and state certified for outdoor camping training. They will learn how to pitch a tent. They will learn all the safety behind that, how to handle the girls. They’ll learn different games. They’ll cook meals outdoors. We require this certification. At least one member of the troop has to be certified in order to take the girls camping.”
Daniels’ coverage area as troop engagement specialist expands as far north as Scott City, as far west as the Colorado border and as far east as almost Wichita. Despite such a coverage area, Daniels said her work is still fun, and she has amazing volunteers to help her in her duties.
“I am so blessed in all of my counties,” she said.
Much of the help Daniels gets in Liberal comes from local troop leader Sarah McIntyre, who helped Daniels with Friday’s event. Daniels is scheduled to be in Medicine Lodge this week, and she said all of her service units and volunteers are amazing.
“I am so lucky in that,” Daniels said. “Everybody is so helpful and understanding. They are willing to drop flyers off to school. They are willing to help me with the meetings, and I think it helps having the troop leaders at meetings.”
Daniels called herself more of a behind-the-scenes troop leader, and she said troop leaders are more often the face troop members will see.
“They’re the ones who are going to be leading the troop,” she said.
