CV NEWS FEED// A Catholic leader of the American Heritage Girls (AHG), a Christian scouting organization, told CatholicVote how spending time in nature brings girls closer to Christ.
In an exclusive interview, AHG’s National Catholic relations specialist Julie Goodwin, and the chair of AHG’s National Catholic Committee, Julie Reilly, discussed how the scouting organization provides a Christ-center community for girls and parents while teaching girls virtue and leadership. Goodwin facilitates relations between Catholic dioceses and the American Heritage Girls.
Goodwin became involved with AHG when looking for an alternative to Girl Scouts for her daughter, since their parish priest would not allow Girl Scouts to operate at their church. “That was it for me. I trusted my pastor,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin “vetted every program out there for girls” and came across AHG in 2009. “They not only allow us but they expect us to be celebrating our faith within the troop,” she explained. The troop is still operating at her parish, and both she and her daughter, who is now married with children, stay in touch with their friends from AHG.
Goodwin and Reilly discussed social media, scouting, virtue, and community with CatholicVote. Note: this interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Could you talk about how going out in the wilderness and spending time in creation mitigates the negative effects of technology?
Goodwin: That’s an excellent question, something definitely needed with our youth today. So yes, American Heritage Girls has a big outdoor focus. We expect the girls to go outdoors, whether it just be a hike or camping for a week or weekend. Getting girls outdoors brings them closer to Christ and it reminds them of God’s creation. They can get out and see that beauty and it takes them away from the pressures of the internet, especially the negativity of the internet. In that way when girls are closer to Christ, they’re not going to be craving that negativity [of social media]. They’re going to be craving His joy to be able to be out in the wilderness and not only the wilderness, just being outside with other girls.
The other really cool part that girls love is that we teach our girls leadership in a Christian way. So the girls, they’re out there together. They’re not just out there by themselves, right? They’re out there together and they can encourage them to be more thoughtful and to really use the time. A lot of our girls on campouts will pray the rosary or they’ll read the Liturgy of Hours or you know, they’ll come together in prayer. They come and unite together that way. The leadership with the girls is allowing them to have that peer pressure. Maybe one girl wants to go off and be on her phone or something like that, [another girl will say] “hey, come over here with us and have fun! We’re building a campfire, hiking, identifying birds,” you know, things like that.
How does AHG teach girls to embrace their femininity?
Reilly: We are a girl-centric organization, so when we develop the program and activities, we’re always thinking about it from a female perspective. Our Catholic faith awards really lean into that femininity all the way through the youngest program up through the oldest program.
The program ends with the last level, the high school girls, have to go through the John Paul II’s Letter to Women. It really drives home what femininity means in this culture, and for some girls when I led some of those older girls through, that it’s kind of a shift in their thinking because culture tells us what “femininity” is, but from a Catholic perspective femininity is a very different than what popular culture tells us. For those older girls, sometimes it’s a real eye opener for them to think about it from a Catholic perspective. They come to see it [femininity] as a beautiful gift.
Could you explain how AHG provides community for girls and families?
Reilly: [The girls] know they’re in a 100% girl environment and they’re being supported by each other. We’ve got our big girls supporting our little girls and going through all those stages of girlhood, into teenagehood and young womanhood. We’re moving through those together and everybody is supporting each other in that.
Goodwin: I think the big draw for families for AHG is knowing that every family that joins is walking that same journey together as parents, right? We all want our girls to grow to be women of integrity, right? That’s what we want for our daughters.. So it’s not just the girls that are embraced by this, it’s also the parents because you know that every parent in that room, every parent that goes to an event, is on the same path to raise our girls up. Because we’re all agreeing to that same statement of faith, and we’re all agreeing that we’re going to teach our girls virtue and teach them how to live that out. So it’s a nice supportive place for parents to be too.
