To celebrate the Girl Scouts of Riverland Council’s 90th Anniversary and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America 95th Anniversary, Girl Scouts of Riverland Council is offering an international philanthropic community service project to support the children of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. During the 2007-08 Membership Year, Girl Scouts of Riverland Council troops and members are asked to organize simple school kits for the primary age school children of Haiti.

Each child’s kit should contain:

• 1 backpack
• 4 blue ink pens
• 2 pencils
• 1 pencil sharpener
• 1 rubber eraser
• 8 notebooks (36 to 96 pages each)
• 1 ruler 

Each group of kits will be for a class of 25 children and should also include two teacher kits of the same plus two boxes of white chalk for each teacher.

The Girl Scouts of Riverland Council is comprised of 302 troops. If each girl in each troop is able to provide one school kit, then Girl Scouts of Riverland Council will provide almost 3000 school kits to 3000 Haitian children!  The kits will be shipped directly from the council service center to the US Ambassador to Haiti, Janet A. Sanderson, as a gift from the girls of Girl Scouts of Riverland Council to the children of Haiti. Ambassador Sanderson will accept the school kits in a ceremony from the Girl Scouts of Riverland council and directly get them into the hands of children who are students in schools of Haiti who can use these gifts the most. The handing-over ceremony will include a 90th Anniversary Council Proclamation and 95th National Proclamation with the names of all troops, leaders, and girls and their hometowns who contributed to this international community service project. The handing-over ceremony will be conducted by the Girl Scouts of Riverland Council President, Patricia Heim with Ambassador Sanderson.

To participate, we need the following information from you: Troop Number, Leader Name, Number of Girls, and Number of Kits.  Please send this information via e-mail with subject line ‘Haiti Project’ or telephone 1-800-78-SCOUT (7-2688) and leave the information with the receptionist.

The backpack is the expensive part of this kit. If you would like to sew a backpack, the directions are here.  

We will be mailing the backpacks in June - so get them to us now! Shipping of the school kits will be organized by Peipho Moving, Allied VanLines, La Crosse, the same company that ships Girl Scouts cookies from Little Brownie Bakers throughout the council.