This is going to have a lot of context added, so bear with me.
I am a 19 year old who has been a part of my troop since I was around six or seven. I begged my mom to start this troop and she caved and decided to team up with strangers in our town to start it. We started with just me, a mom who had just moved to our town and her two girls, and three girls from my street, who were strangers until that point. (This context is very important later.) We weren't huge on cookies, all together our troop of six sold about ten thousand, and we were saving up for a trip to Savannah, as well as doing service projects.
We would meet weekly to work towards badges, teamed up with our local boy scouts to do a pinewood derby, sponsored our own float in a Christmas parade, sang songs, volunteered in our community, and we were very focused on how to make the world a better place and be a sister to every girl scout.
Over a decade later, the troop has fallen apart. My mom stopped being a leader when I turned about 14 or 15, because she had a lot going on with taking care of my grandparents and with her career, I had a friend who would drive me to meetings and I was self sufficient on the cookie front so all she had to do was show up for booth sales and help me transport cookies. She still volunteered her time when she could, and would still send me with baked treats and supplies for events we were hosting, she just didn't have the time.
When I turned 18, her obligation to the troop ended. I decided I wanted to stick by my troop and continue into being a leader. This is where everything went wrong. I told them I'd still like to be a leader, and that I'm ready to do the training. (At this point, I had already done a full summer at a local girl scout camp and was pretty sure I had already received the training, but I understand that sometimes you just have to do what you got to do to stay above board). This was over a year and a half ago, and I have still not received any training from my troop, but I have now gone through two summers of training through the camp, so I figured they thought it was enough.
I have not been put in the loop on troop decisions. They planned all of these activities for the girls, and did not ask me once for ideas with the troop. They apparently met for coffee and discussed everything, set it all up, and had already made up their minds. I wasn't even informed of our meeting until less than 48 hours before hand, and I had to scramble to get coverage for my shift that day so I could come. My work schedule is flexible, and I have told them that I need a week ahead of time so I can plan things out, but they do not communicate with me.
My troop had stopped doing weekly meetings. then they stopped their bi-weekly, then they stopped monthly. We just finished our first meeting in about seven months. I sat at the usual leader table, and they sat at a different table, and set up the markers and coloring sheets in front of me and told me to color in the sheets with the rest of the scouts because they had a list of activities they were going to tell us about. This was not an age appropriate activity, because there was only one girl under age 15 in there, and she was glued to her iPad and uninterested. There were only four scouts at the meeting.
We have about six girls in our troop, one is graduating in a few months, and two graduate next school year. I suggested that we run a recruitment event and see if there are any girls in our area that are interested, and they immediately shut me down. They said that they couldn't trust any outsiders after a fiasco (that I admit was very rough on our troop), and that we cannot do any more recruitment events. I'll touch more on that later.
Our main troop leader is around 70-80 years old. She planned all sorts of activities for the troop, but it was activities the girls were clearly not interested in. Things like sewing, crochet (all of our older girls already crochet and do not need lessons, which she would know if she talked to them for more than five seconds, one of the girls was literally wearing an item that she hand made and had told us about it multiple times in that meeting alone), seeing plays and maybe doing a singing class.
None of the girls were interested at all. When they were asked for ideas, one of the older girls suggested volunteering at our local shelter and maybe donating some items, and our other leader told her that she would have to contact them herself. She didn't take that opportunity to broach the subject for the girls, basically just told the scout to volunteer on her own time, and went back to talking about ways to spend troop money.
Our younger girls are fading out. The singular younger girl at the meeting was playing on her iPad and looked uninterested, so I asked her about her day and all she said is, "I don't want to be here". This is the same girl who was literally overflowing with excitement at the idea of cooking outside and earning a badge to put on her new vest a year ago. It's like the life got sucked out of her. I asked her if she had any ideas for something we could do and she said, "Leave".
After the meeting, I helped clean up and was talking with the girls about school and college applications, testing, finding jobs, getting their permits/licenses, etc. The second the girls left, all the energy in the room died even more than it already had. This was the point in the meeting where I had revisited the topic of a recruitment event, and was told off by both leaders, and then told that they didn't care about scouts anymore, and they were just going to keep it up until their girls had graduated, then I could have the troop and run all the recruitment events I wanted to and "get burned like they have". It struck me as odd because one of these troop leaders came from a recruitment event, and all 4 of the girls at the table that night had too. I felt like they were being overly negative about a bad situation that is over and done with.
They made it very clear to me where they stand with this troop, and they do not want to see it thrive, they want it to struggle to make ends meet, then to abandon it when they've gotten what they want out of it. It's not fair to the girls in the troop, many of which are my friends sisters who I've watched grow up.
This is where I ask for advice.
The leaders didn't talk to me at all after they blew up, and me and my other younger leaders went to the parking lot to talk.
The three of us are 19, and are tired. We decided we aren't going to be pushed around in this troop anymore, and we aren't going to set a bad example for the younger girls by letting our troop leaders trample their ideas. We're going to break away from the troop and start our own. This is emotional for us, because we've been in this troop from the beginning, and we know what a good, strong troop looks like. It hurts to leave behind the troop number we've had since we were young, but it gets to a point.
We decided that we will reach out to council directly and request to be trained, complete the training, and pick a location. Two of us have an up to date background check completed by GSUSA, because we work at a camp, and our third is also getting a background check. We have two girls that will come from our existing troop, the two 19 year old leaders sisters. They don't like the way they view girl scouts, they view it as a chore, not as a fun and explorative environment. One leader knows two girls that may be on board, on top of the two we already have. We are going to search for a fifth, maybe even sixth member, and get together to try to form a troop.
I really wish it didn't come to this, but I also don't have a choice, other than quitting, and I can't do that. If we take the two girls, they won't have enough girls in the existing troop to do another year, because they will dip under five girls when one graduates this spring. Part of me wonders if that's what they want.
I just don't know if what I'm doing is right. And I don't know the right way to do it without burning bridges. One of the older troop leaders came up to me after we had talked in the parking lot and told me that we are leaders and that our ideas are welcome, but she had literally just placed us at a kid table and blown up on us for suggesting an idea, so it felt like she was saying one thing and doing another. It felt like a slap to the face to be privately told one thing and publicly shown another.
I want to have a sit down discussion with them once we get our ducks in a row for the troop and tell them why we are doing what we're doing, and explain that we don't have hard feelings towards them or the way they run the troop, but that we have different goals for the girls, and that others do too. I don't want them to feel wronged, but I can't sit back and watch a train wreck happen.
I also can't get any information on how to start a troop without putting my information into the girl scout website. I know the basics, and I'm asking my mom for help, but I also don't want to pop up on their radar before we have everything figured out, especially because the leader that blew up on me is our service unit leader, because I don't want a big confrontation and I don't want to hurt them before I have a chance to talk with them, so if you have any advice on what to do/how to do it, please, please, please, help me out.
I just feel like I'm stuck in this bad position, and there's only so much I can do to fix it from the inside.
TL;DR: My troop freaking sucks now, we barely have any girls, my friends and troop leaders want to start our own troop now but we don't really know how aside from the basics, please help us figure this out!