Welcome, everyone, to Midday Magazine for this Wednesday, July 10th, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailov here, and I am joined right now by our great friend,
Kim Shields, Community Investment and Communication Specialist with our friends that
encourage.
It's good to have you here, Kim.
Great to see you.
Thanks for having me back.
You brought some friends.
That's good.
We have Laura Martins and Bethany McNally with us from Girl Scouts of the Northwestern
Great Lakes.
Laura, Bethany, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having us.
Well, looking forward to talking with you all in just a moment here.
First, Kim, I would like to actually get into with you, encourages community foundation
and the 2024 Scholarship Awards.
Yes, thank you so much.
We had a wonderful scholarship season again, and all of this is in thanks to the donors.
None of these scholarships would be possible without their incredible generosity and their
belief in education and wanting to support students in their future.
Without that, you know, there could be a hole, to be honest, you know, these students
are so fortunate to have scholarship resources made available to them.
I was talking with someone the other day, and you know, I'm a little bit older and in
my 50s, and we didn't have these opportunities available to us, and it's just so wonderful
that all the opportunities that the kids have available these days, and we thank those
donors so much.
I think it was after our second interview some years ago that I had a listener talking
to me about encouraged, and some of the thoughts that they had about pitching to you guys
about ideas and different programs that they thought would be good in the city.
And right away, this lady looks me in the eye, and just like, I don't know, I don't
want to over dramatize this, like she was about to tear up or anything, but you could see
the emotion in her, and she's like, boy, I wish you encouraged was around when I was
a kid.
Yes.
And you're so right on this, so I, not just kind of fitting a whole, definitely filling
a whole that we would have in so many areas, whether it's scholarships or it's a zoo, or
so many different people that you've brought in with us, Kim, so yes, encourages definitely
filling a need that this community needs, every chance they get.
Thank you so much for saying that and for recognizing that.
We're really proud of the work that we do, and I've shared this with listeners before,
but it's our 30th year, and we're just humbled to be able to continue the work that Virginia,
Brazo, had started 30 years ago.
It really, really is an honor for us to do this work and to support our community.
Yeah.
I love stats, Kim.
I'm a sports guy, so I love stats.
Any stats I can get my hands on?
You got some for us.
I do.
I do.
So this year, in 2024, we had 195 scholarships that were awarded, and that totaled more
than $230,000.
Wow.
So since inception, back in 1994, we had our first scholarship awarded for a one scholarship
in the amount of $500, which is still a lot of money.
And since then, we've been able to award more than 4,400 scholarships, and it's for a value
of more than $3.4 million, I mean, the impact that that has had in the students' lives
that that has touched is amazing.
You can't put it into words.
Right.
I know that's our job, because we're talking right now, but we have to, but it's very hard
to put into words.
It really is.
Even me.
I saw these notes before, and I'm looking over, and I'm looking over it, and I still, I
don't know how to put that in the words.
I don't know how she's going to do it when Kim comes in.
It's such a beautiful thing, and it really does humble you.
Yes.
I've never been a part of any of this other than our interactions.
And I am humbled by this to be a part of this community that does something like that.
Right.
And it's truly such a joy to be able to go to the scholarship programs and present these
scholarship awards to the students.
Talk about why the scholarship was established, tell the story, present it, and shake the
kids' hand.
Look in their eyes.
I mean, give them a huge smile.
It's just, it's wonderful.
And I mean, again, we've said honored, but I just love it.
Yeah.
I enjoy that so much.
So out of those scholarships, a little more stats for you here.
So out of those scholarships, our minimum award was $500.
The best practice in the U.S. is 1,000, and we're working towards that.
But we want to make sure these scholarships are accessible and available, and we are thrilled
to be able to have $500 awards.
About 45% of our scholarships were that $500 mark.
The maximum award this year was $5,500.
Wow.
It's a multi-year award, and what a thrill.
And I remember presenting that one to the students.
98% of the scholarship recipients were all from the Southwood County area.
Each scholarship is very specific in their criteria, and there are some for outside our
area, but to have 98% going to students in our area, wow.
What an impact.
And that's an impact that directly hits our local area, and in fact, and it's an investment
in our future as well.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, the average award was, the exact number was $1181, almost $1200, you know, for each
of those scholarships.
Just incredible.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
So yeah, that's kind of it with my stats that I wanted to share.
Sure.
We have information on our website if anybody wants to go.
I have all the student's names, the recipients, the scholarships they received.
It's really something.
So please take time to look that over.
Yeah, encourage you to do that, and we'll give you more information on how you can reach
out to Kim before we wrap up.
I did want to take a moment before we talk to the ladies about Girl Scouts about the
zoo programs, and we're big fans of that.
The zoo's only a block from us.
I love that zoo.
I can practically see the animals from here.
Absolutely.
And I'm waiting for you to come and do a show from there.
Yes.
That would be so much fun.
It is one of my dreams to do a remote from there.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
So in June, we had the Raptor Education Group here.
There were about 150 attendees between the two programs.
They brought their birds with them, and I love that they called them educational ambassadors.
It was really fascinating, obviously that these were rescued animals.
So the participants and attendees were not able to touch the birds.
But the information that they provided was really, really good.
And so many questions.
Hands were going up all the time, and they did such a great job educating in a fun way.
About their work, it's birds.
They're so good at this stuff.
And again, talking about an investment in their future, how many of those kids are going
to end up in this spark something in them to want to further pursue maybe being as
well as a veterinarian or just caring about animals and wanting to donate or work at a
Humane Society, who knows where this could spend to.
Absolutely.
We actually had one young lady at the afternoon show, and well, actually, they were both
afternoon shows.
That was the later the 330 show.
And one of the presenters from Reggie was was sharing information about their education.
And they had gone to UWSP and talked about they had an animal education type degree.
I don't remember the name of it.
This young lady, she lit up.
She was like, that's what I want to do.
That's where I want to go to make that connection.
And then you had the little ones that just love the animals.
We had all ages there, so it was incredible.
And so we anticipate a similar experience, July 24th, Noel from Zuzord is coming back.
She is fantastic, and the information that she provides about all the animals, she keeps
track of the different animals she's brought.
So I know she's coming back, but she does rotate, she'll bring some favorites that the audience
members seem to have over and over, but she does rotate them.
So I'm never quite sure who she's bringing in, but it's always an exciting show.
We've gotten to talk to her a little bit, and I think that even for her, some of it is
a little by little.
We'll see how the animals are doing in the morning, a little of that, and she adapts with
that pretty good.
She is so much fun and so good at what she does, and it's such a passion for this.
Yep, absolutely.
So we're excited to have her back, so that's coming up two weeks on July 24th.
And then we have David Stokes back on August 21st, he will wrap up our programs.
And all of these programs are free to attend by the gracious generosity of Helen Mead.
She had established a fun, dead encourage that helps provide these educational opportunities
for the people that love animals in the community, and this will impact our community for
years to come.
Yeah.
David also joined us with you, Kim, once, and that was fantastic, we really enjoyed it.
Last summer.
Another guy who is just always adapting his show and growing it while also making sure
that the audience is enjoying themselves and learning and having fun, he's very good
at what he does.
And so much with time passing more and more, I'm so thankful to you and to people that bring
up the Meads whenever we can, especially Helen and the work that they did, the legacy
that they created here, and the investment that they made, not only in this area and this
community, but in its future.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Helen Mead had established several funds at Encourage that support many of our nonprofits,
including these zoo activities that we have at the zoo, Wisconsin Rapid Zoo, but we have
several organizations that are beneficiaries of funds that she had established.
Hmm.
Appreciate that, Kim.
Thank you very much for all that.
Absolutely.
And we'll be sure to be talking about the zoo programs that are morning shows and making
sure that they get a good crowd for that.
Wonderful.
We have it on our social as well.
Yeah.
And we'll give you more information on how to reach out to Kim and find out more about
Encourage in a moment.
We're speaking with Kim Shields from Encourage, along with Laura and Bethany from Girl Scouts
in Northwestern Great Lakes.
And Kim and I have mentioned the word investment a lot.
My journalistically, I should mention that my sister was in Girl Scouts for a long time.
It's one of her favorite things and while she had two boys that she's going to put in
the Boy Scouts, she just loved Girl Scouts and talks about it so highly and knowing that
I was going to be speaking with some Girl Scouts.
I talked to my sister this weekend and asked her, Jill, what are some of your memories
and everything?
It was an hour.
I was on the phone with my sister who I loved the death, one of my best friends.
But it was an hour of me just sitting here, listening to her talking about stories and
things that her and her friend Kelly did and so many things about the Girl Scouts.
And they're not alone.
Almost anybody that's been a part of this program has great memories of it.
Laura Bethany, Kim, I would like to ask, how does Girl Scouts and Encourage come together?
How does this work out?
So we've been really fortunate to support the Girl Scouts over the years.
Since 97, we've awarded more than $225,000 in grants.
So we have designated funds, the Helen Meat Fund that I just mentioned.
She does support the Girl Scouts as well as others.
Some donor advisors have provided grants and we've provided unrestricted grant making.
And so whenever we have the opportunity to highlight one of our great community organizations
or nonprofits, it's an added bonus if we've provided
grant support, which, to be honest, is the majority of them.
Yeah.
So we are thrilled to connect again with the Girl Scouts.
Laura had come into our office, kind of given us an update and I'm so excited for them
to share their new programming and thought this was a great opportunity for the listeners
to hear.
Laura and Bethany, I'll ask you questions individually and you can answer them as you
will.
So the audience can recognize the name to the voice if you don't mind.
Hello, Laura.
Hi.
How are you?
Doing good.
Thanks for joining us.
Hope you're doing well.
And hello, Bethany.
Hi.
How's it going?
Good.
Thanks for joining us, Bethany.
I appreciate both of your time.
Right away, I kind of want to get just a little bit of history on you too and then we'll
get into a little bit more of that investment and how much these investments mean to the
Girl Scouts.
How long have both of you been a part of Girl Scouts?
Yeah.
So in March of this year, I celebrated 21 years with the Girl Scouts.
That's awesome.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've been 22 years now is how long I've been in the Girl Scouts and I just started
working full time for the Girl Scout Council last year, so just over a year.
But before that, I did 10 summers at Camp Birch Trails in various roles.
Very cool.
And thank you for sharing that.
Either of you or both of you Girl Scouts as kids?
I was not.
I grew up in this council, started as a brownie.
Very cool.
Yeah.
I started as a brownie as well.
Nice.
Yeah.
You're in Wisconsin Rapids.
No, Camp.
Camp Second, Julia.
And my sister would love to point out that she started out as a brownie as well, because
you was very quick to correct me.
And she's like, well, actually, I was a brownie then a Girl Scout.
Yeah.
That was the beginning of the conversation.
And I was one of those Girl Scouts that hand sewed on all my badges.
My mom didn't do it for me.
Nice.
So it's quite quote unquote beautiful.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
But I was proud and still am.
Laura, Bethany, when it comes to investments from Encourage or really any organization,
donations, any of these things, how much is it of the lifeblood of what you do with Girl Scouts?
It's absolutely essential.
And we are so blessed to be supported by generous individuals in the Wisconsin Rapids area.
We're also a funded partner through the United Way in areas as well.
So people have helped us do amazing things.
Everything from supporting regular troop function, which is absolutely essential to everything
we do, to supporting special projects at Camp Second, which is located in the city limits
of Wisconsin Rapids and making enhancements to those programs.
And also supporting our new mobile effort, which Bethany will be talking about a little
bit later.
Oh, yeah.
Bethany, I'd love to hear about that.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's called Adventures on the Goat.
And the goal is to get Girl Scouts on the water in the trees and under the stars.
So it's really a great introduction to Camp.
Instead of troops having to travel to Camp to do these outdoor activities, when they're
very young or just getting started in the outdoors, I go to their home towns and run programs
for them.
And I bring all the equipment and all the certifications.
So all the troop leader needs to be is there, and they don't have to run anything.
And I can run that all for them.
One of the more amazing programs I think I've heard of in doing this job, just be blunt
about it.
And that's amazing.
Is this a program that would be able to go as part of the reason even for this program,
being able to go into more urban areas, being able to reach more kids?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I've done a lot of, so we have such a large geographic council.
I've done a lot of our rural cities as well because they're not near any of our Girl Scouts
facilities and our council staff.
And then I've also done a lot of programs in urban areas as well.
I've done archery at different city parks on soccer fields.
I've also done programs with the boys and girls clubs in their facilities as well.
I ask, I come from that kind of area.
And my sister did too originally.
And it's part of the reason why for me, my parents didn't even think about Boy Scouts
or anything like that because there really wasn't available where I was.
When we moved out here, right away, one of the first things my mom does is ask Jill if
she wants to be a brownie, she does, and she gets her involved in it.
And one of the things my parents noted right away was, God, we wish we could have gotten
Jimmy into this or a program like this.
We're speaking with Kim, Laura, and Bethany.
And ladies, I was wondering, this is a fantastic idea.
Where did this come from?
Who we had this idea?
Where did this begin?
Yeah.
So our CEO actually challenged our program and inclusion director to come up with a program
directive that would really serve the girls throughout our entire service area as a council,
which we are geographically massive.
And so she kind of thought about it.
Let's get some things that other Girl Scout Councils were doing as far as mobile programs,
which would allow us to serve girls that live in urban areas as well as girls in rural
areas that were 60 miles or more from one of our council properties.
And what's constant is just gorgeous and amazing and has so many opportunities that are focused
on outdoor adventure.
That became the theme of our adventures on the Go mobile unit.
And we actually are the only outdoor focused Girl Scout mobile program unit in the entire
United States.
Wow.
That's pretty cool.
Which are our different figures in that area, which we are so proud of.
I don't play, I'm proud of you guys, and I'm not even a Girl Scout.
Yeah.
I think I can see that.
I can understand that.
And I think, too, hopefully, the first to do this, you know, that we have other Girl Scout
programs that are able to do this and get the funding to do these kind of things.
Hi.
I totally agree.
Our national organization Girl Scouts of the USA has actually reached out personally to
our council because other Girl Scout Councils are seeing what we're doing and they're super
excited about bringing that to their girls as well.
Is there anything else about this program that you're excited about?
You want to let the audience know?
Oh my gosh.
How many things?
Great answer.
Great answer.
Well, I'm just excited that more people, the kids that I work with, it's pretty much their
first time ever doing kind of an adventure activity outside.
Just because of the cost, nowadays, of those types of programs and the equipment that you
need is very expensive and all of those things associated with it.
So a lot of times, I'm seeing kids who have gotten on a paddle board for the first time
and they're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing or picked up a bow and done archery for the
first time.
So it's really just very rewarding and quite exciting to do.
Yeah.
And, you know, I know that a lot of the people nowadays, especially older people, they
tend to think that every kid wants a tech device or every kid wants their face in one
or anything.
I actually think a lot about my generation and where I grew up and people thought this
about kids in the projects or in the South Side of Chicago or something like that a lot
when I was a kid.
And we would have, every once in a while, a teacher or somebody bring us something from
nature or try to teach us about pine cones or something like that.
And I remember every one of my classmates glued to whatever that teacher was talking about.
Kids love nature.
It's just in their blood, it's in their DNA.
You just got to give them the opportunity too.
And for so long, it was kind of on, well, if you can reach us or if you're within a zip
code of this or something, the idea of this program, I don't think I can speak enough to
how impactful this can be.
The work that the Girl Scouts do is unwordable.
It's incredible what they do.
And now they're going to be able to do more of it and reach more kids.
That's impressive.
That is pretty cool.
I can imagine how excited you all are for this.
Yeah, we are so excited.
Like, tomorrow actually will be the official conclusion of our first year as adventures
on the go, actually out in the community is doing service.
And since it was a new program, we were tasked with figuring out, okay, how many kiddos
do we think this is going to serve in the first year?
And we said, how about 500?
We feel like that's a great reach.
Stephanie, how many girls have we served as of the state?
We're at 826.
That's amazing.
There are 20 different counties.
Yeah.
Beyond impressive.
It is.
It is.
And you know, James, when you were talking about like kids connecting with nature, it's
so wired into us as human beings.
And it's so good for our mental health, you know, and so we're giving kids the opportunity
to be physically active, to learn new skills, to be out in this amazing world that worked
with us, the women.
So I just think that it has just been a wonderful opportunity for us to just really widen
our reach and help a lot of girls and troop leaders and families through this program.
Yeah.
My sister, one of her favorite things to do with her boys is she lives in Madison and
go for walks with them.
And she said this week, and when I was talking to her, a part of the reason for that is
doing a lot of those things in Girl Scouts and getting comfortable with nature.
As city kids, we didn't have a lot of that.
But she got that and now she just loves to be out there.
Her and her husband go camping all the time and a lot of this stems from her days and
brownies and Girl Scouts.
As we're wrapping up, I'm not a good journalist, but I don't ask a hard question here.
I'm going to ask you now to put in the words and quickly why this is so important and the
things that Girl Scouts can do for kids out there.
Well, I think that Girl Scouts is so deeply tied to our mission, right?
We build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place.
And whether that's through participation and skill building and building your own personal
confidence through outdoor adventure, or learning things that help direct you to a career
that is meaningful, or simply being able to build healthy relationships with your peers
and other adults in your life, I think all of those things are amazing.
And all of these are our organization offers for girls.
Well said, very well said, and I couldn't agree with you more.
And we can use more and more programs and things like this.
Adventure on the go, everybody, is coming to the National Night out on August 6th as well.
Thank you for that, Kim.
Yes, yes.
So we will see you there.
That's a big night around here.
We'll be certainly talking about that and mentioning it.
Now we'll be talking about this program as well.
And if people have follow up questions that would like to know more, not only about this
program, but maybe Girl Scouts, how can they reach either of you?
Sure.
They can check us out on our website, which is www.gsnwgl.org, or they can contact us through
our toll free number, which is 888-747-6945.
Thank you so much, ladies.
Really do appreciate the time today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kim, are anybody wants to reach out to you or encourage how can they do that?
Absolutely.
Give us a call at 715-423-3863 or send us an email at helloatincouragecf.org.
Appreciate you, Kim.
Thanks so much for the time and bringing in these great guests.
Thank you.
We'll have more Midday Magazine for you tomorrow right here at WFHR, locally grown radio.
