Are you curious about Girl Scout history? Want to walk in the steps of Juliette Gordon Low? That’s good, because we’re looking for members for the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio Archive Committee!

What is the Archive Committee?

We’re so glad you asked! The Archive Committee is a group of passionate volunteers who are responsible for cataloging and sharing the history of Girl Scouts throughout western Ohio.

They help create the display cases in the GSWO offices, create historical kits for girls, catalog stories from alums, review and catalog a wide inventory of old uniforms, photos, books, posters, and a variety of Girl Scout equipment, plus so much more! The committee’s purpose is to collect and manage the council’s historical items and records, and then share this history with our members.

Interested? Excellent! Here’s what we’re looking for.

Helpful Skills

In order to be successful, the Archive Committee needs to have members with a diverse range of skill sets. There are so many ways to catalog history, so we need to have masters of many trades on hand to help!

Are you confident with a sewing machine? Do you love making and repairing clothes? Great! We need volunteers with seamstress skills to help us repair and maintain antique uniforms from throughout our 100+ year history.

Or maybe you’re really tech savvy. That’s awesome, too! We need support in organizing and blending the inventory data that we have. We are working to set up new database that will allow all offices to continue to add items and track them by category, features, quality, and location.

Do you have design experience? We’re always updating our displays throughout the community, so we could use your help thinking outside the box on ways to showcase our amazing history. We also need volunteers to help select items that we can display on the walls of our camps and offices!

Are you an artist, writer, or educator? We need your help in bringing Girl Scout history to life in our kits and other program activities! These will help our members and the community learn about the contribution of Girl Scouting to our communities and the lives of girls and women over the past 100+ years.

If you’ve just finished organizing your closet at home, help us organize ours! We want to make sure all of our historical memorabilia is kept safe and easily accessible. Use your organizing skills to help us get there!

How to Get Involved

You know how you can help, and you’re excited to get involved. Awesome! So what does that look like?

As the Archive Committee is volunteer-based, your schedule can be flexible depending on your availability! You decide how much time you want to invest.

You can be a one-time volunteer who is willing to repair 10 older uniforms. Or you can become a regional committee member by working on a specific area of work, like helping to create and install the council office displays every four months.

For those who want to make a bigger commitment, you can be an Archive Steering Committee member, where you are a part of the overall planning and management of the council archives, with hands-on work in the office that is most convenient for you! In this role, you’re responsible for attending one four-hour council-wide committee meeting per month, plus 3-4 hours of archive work per month. This additional work could be sorting pictures by decades, collecting oral history from around western Ohio, sorting and labeling historical items, or making mannequins for display cases, to name a few options!

If you want to contribute to the preservation of and sharing of our Girl Scout history, we’d love to have you as an Archive Committee volunteer! Interested? Contact the Customer Care Team at  888.350.5090 or customerservice@gswo.org and they’ll match you with the opportunity you’re looking for!