Greetings, and welcome to the Web site for the recently conducted 2008 Girl Scout National Council Session/51st Convention.

I’d like to mention one of the great things for me about those few special days in Indianapolis, which was the chance to meet with delegates and members of the entire Movement and review the progress we’ve made in the last triennium.

Three years ago the transformation of Girl Scouting was just beginning, and in Indianapolis we got a look at just how far we’ve come. I don’t have the space here to go into detail, but I do want to mention two milestones: our national program, the New Girl Scout Leadership Experience, has officially launched, and the realignment of our councils is 80 percent complete.

Now, as we look out toward 2011, we see more great things coming for the new triennium: two new series of journeys books, realignment completed, new skills and capabilities for councils and at GSUSA, a streamlined volunteer intake and management system, and the launch of a major nationwide campaign to celebrate the Girl Scouting Centennial in 2012.

This is a thrilling time for our Movement, and we want the transformation of Girl Scouting to be even more significant than the past. We have a vision of what the Movement will be once we’ve transformed it—and of what we’ll be able to do for our girls.

Almost a hundred years ago, Juliette Gordon Low picked up the telephone and called a friend and said, “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!”

You and I, along with the more than three million people in our Movement, have something for the girls of Savannah and New York and Indianapolis and Galveston and everywhere in this country—and the world beyond. We’ve already started it!

Kathy Cloninger
Chief Executive Officer
Girl Scouts of the USA