Community service can a be a large part of your troop's Girl Scout program. Although the possibilities are endless, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite with all of you and some ideas on how to make these activities meaningful to your girls.

One of my favorite ideas is to have a community service theme that you follow for a period of time. In my older daughter's troop, we tend to focus on a theme for a year. One year we adopted an air force team that was on active duty in Iraq. We showered Valentines, care packages, letters, and Girl Scout cookies on the men and women who were serving our country.

To make this project meaningful, we tried to personalize the team for the girls. The commander of the team was an individual with whom I went to high school. The girls got a big kick out of our high school yearbooks. We also put together a small packet that "explained Iraq" at their level. In that packet was a letter from my former classmate explaining what they were doing in Iraq and describing their living conditions. We also included a map of the country showing where they were stationed and a summary of the conflict in "kid terms." To create this, the Scholastic News site was extremely helpful. We also sent and received pictures back and forth, which put a face on the girls for the service men and women and vice versa.

Another year, our focus was a shelter for homeless families attempting to get back on their feet. We chose that particular shelter because it housed children, which we felt would have a greater impact on the girls. The girls kicked off their service to this shelter by serving Thanksgiving dinner. In two short hours the girls had "met" all the families and formulated a week's worth of questions. We returned throughout the year to spend time in the shelter's preschool playing with the kids, donating books to the school's library, and to bring cases of our trademark cookies.

Our girls have also participated in many "drives," from food drives to toy drives to blanket drives. The toy drives, in many ways, are the most significant for the girls, particularly when we explain to them that the toys we collect may be the only toy the recipient will own. For children with an overabundance of toys, the idea that a child would have just one toy was shocking.

We are always considering new opportunities for meaningful service. Thinking Day, for example, can provide a theme for troops to focus on as well. Food was the theme one year, giving girls an opportunity to focus on hunger locally, nationally, and globally. For other ideas, check out the links on this page, scour the newspaper, or consult a local house of worship.