Camping for Big Girls

Camp CEO! Sounds like a high level boot camp, right?

Actually, part of that desciption is right, the high level part.

Boot camp, NO!

Last weekend, I spent a two glorious, blue sky days at Camp Libby, a Girl Scout camp in Defiance, Ohio. Talk about beautiful. The camp buildings are all painted a very earthy dark brown, and the style of architecture fits in with all the mature trees.

But what is Camp CEO?

This is a new Girl Scout project. We have brought it to Ohio. We means, my friend, Lori Cannon, who gets me into this kind of stuff. She introduced me to Angela Tennaro, the program director for the Girl Scouts of Maumee Valley Council in this area. We also brought on Meredith Delman, Nicole Minadeo and Theresa Emrick to put this project together.

16 women were paired with 16 young women in grades 10-12. The whole weekend was devoted to mentoring with a focus on business. Sometimes the girls mentored us, and sometimes we gave in return.

My mentee (or protege as they are sometimes called) was Tara Patel, a junior at Sylvania Northview High School. I feel very lucky to have made this acquaintance. She is smart, energetic, a take charge kind of gal, petite, and beautiful. She writes for her school newspaper and shared that she had written an editorial asking why the school encourages being environmentally conscious, including having classes in the topic, when in fact, the school did not recycle. She said that as a result of the editorial the school is starting to recycle paper.

More about Camp CEO tomorrow. But in the meantime, what are your mentoring experiences?