By JEFFREY SMITH
Leader staff writer
The Girl Scouts of the Juliette Low Service Unit will host World Thinking Day from 10 a.m. till noon Saturday at the Cabot National Guard Armory. The event is free and open to the public. Food samples are 10 cents each. Money raised from food samples are donated to the Juliette Low World Friendship Fund.
The JLSU has members from Cabot, Austin, Ward, Beebe, Lonoke, England and Carlisle. It has nearly 250 girls in 25 individual troops ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Each Girl Scout troop in the service unit will represent a country. They will prepare a booth with information, decorations and food and drinks from their assigned country.
“It’s a fun, educational event and is very much like an international food bazaar. The Girl Scouts put in a lot of work to research their countries and create items and food for the event. At the event, the Girl Scouts get a ‘passport’ and are able to visit and learn about the other countries,” scout parent Breanna Wells said.
The Juliette Low World Friendship Fund was formed in 1927 to celebrate Low’s love of travel, new cultures and new friends. Today, the fund support girls as they travel internationally and attend global events.
In the fall, all troops were assigned a country to represent at World Thinking Day. Girls researched their troop’s assigned country individually and during troop meetings to learn more about the assigned country. The troop decided how to represent their country—24 counties will be represented. Some are Canada, Thailand, Paraguay, Indonesia and Denmark.
World Thinking Day has been celebrated since 1926. It is a day of international friendship, speaking out on issues that affect girls and young women and fundraising for 10 million Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world.
“World Thinking Day’s 2017 theme is Grow. We want a world where all girls have a safe space to grow and have many exciting, relevant, accessible and learner-led experiences. Girls Scouts build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place,” service unit director Beverly Keathley said.
“It is a day when (Girls Scouts) think about their ‘sisters’ in all the countries of the world, the meaning of guiding and its global impact. The idea is to create a greater awareness and understanding of different cultures and any global concerns regarding that particular region,” Keathley said.
