Girl Scouts Choose Transgender Girls over $100,000 Donation
The Girl Scouts of Western Washington were going to get a $100,000 donation in the early half of 2015, however the donor made a request: that the money wouldn’t be used to support transgender girls, so the chapter gave it back.
“Girl Scouts is for every girl,” Ferland told the Seattle Metropolitan magazine. “And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.”
From then on, they began to look for other donors by creating an online fundraising campaign.
“$100,000 is a lot of money,” their Indiegogo page states. “In fact, it’s almost a third of our entire financial assistance program for this year — and girls need this support now. That’s why losing this gift is such a big deal.”
By the following day, the campaign had reached its goal, and by Wednesday, the Girl Scouts had more than $250,000. Because this was the chapter’s first try at crowd-funding, their effort was very successful.
This effort was the second time “in less than five years” that a Girl Scout council has “taken a public stand to support transgender girls.”
Here was a statement made from the Seattle Metropolitan magazine:
In 2012, when she headed the organization’s Colorado council, a 7-year-old transgender girl in Denver was denied entry to a troop. Although the council had never specifically said that it accepted transgender girls, the national organization had always made inclusivity the foundation of its mission. So after checking with the council’s attorney, Ferland issued a public statement welcoming transgender girls and explaining that the council was working to find a troop for the girl who’d been rejected. “Every girl that is a Girl Scout is a Girl Scout because her parent or guardian brings her to us and says, ‘I want my child to participate,’” Ferland says. “And I don’t question whether or not they’re a girl.”
The video below shows the Girl Scouts of Western Washington’s campaign. Make sure you check it out.
(Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Marisol Deluna)
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