Sparking Creativity Brownie Aged Girl Scouts

If someone asked you what it means to be a Girl Scout, you might think of thin mints, samoas, or the badges sewn onto a sash. You might think of summer camps or cookie booths outside grocery stores. What often goes unnoticed is the depth of what Girl Scouts actually does — the way it cultivates belonging, builds leaders, and creates spaces that are explicitly anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and committed to addressing the systemic barriers young girls face from an early age. The Dream Lab at the Lowry location in Denver, Colorado is one of those spaces. It functions as a sanctuary for Girl Scouts, their families, and the broader community, a place where girls can develop skills, explore their creativity, and connect with one another in an environment that takes their potential seriously. It is a space that believes in them before they have learned to believe in themselves.

During the 2025-2026 academic year, Bryanna Rodriguez and I joined Girl Scouts of Colorado as Program Developer Interns through the University of Denver's Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning ChangeMaker Internship Program. Our shared goal was to address a gap we had identified in engagement at the Dream Lab, particularly among Brownie-aged girls. We wanted to understand what was drawing girls into the space and what was keeping them away and then do something about it.

We approached this work from two directions. Bryanna focused on the logistical and research side, visiting other Dream Lab locations across Colorado to observe what programming and machinery had proven most effective for young girls. She gathered insights from staff,conducted research into available tools, and compiled a list of recommendations for our location. I worked more directly with troops observing programs, speaking with troop leaders, and getting a firsthand sense of where engagement was strongest and where it fell flat.Together, our observations pointed in the same direction: girls wanted something tangible, creative, and their own. That led us to the Cricut machine — a creative tool that allows users to design and produce their own stickers. With funding support from CCESL, we secured a machine and began developing a curriculum to integrate it into existing programs, including the Programming Robots Badge, where girls could design their own robot prototype as a sticker rather than building one from cardboard. The program was designed to be replicable, age-appropriate, and genuinely exciting for Brownie-aged girls who may not yet see themselves as makers or creators.

Our pilot is still in progress, but the foundation has been laid. We leave behind a program model, a curriculum framework, and a Cricut machine ready to be used, tools that Girl Scouts of Colorado can build on long after our internship has ended. What we take with us is harder to quantify. We learned that community engagement is not linear, that setbacks are not failures, and that the most meaningful work happens in the small moments a troop leader sharing what her girls love, a Brownie lighting up at the idea of making something with her own hands. Those moments are what the Dream Lab is built for. And those are the moments we hope our work helps create, for many girls to come.