Different Girl Scouts meet once a week in a downtown Manhattan hotel’s spare room, which is lit up with colorful designs and string lights. They earn medals, take field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and get tips on how to use the train in a city where most people have only recently begun to phone home.
They are the newest members of the largest Girl Scout army in New York City. And they reside in an incident house where 170, 000 asylum seekers and refugees have crossed the southern border since 2022, including tens of thousands of babies.
The Girl Scouts have been slowly welcoming lots of the city’s youngest new residents with the help of donations as government officials debate how to deal with the influx of new arrivals. Troop 6000 has served children who have been in the house structure since 2017. The majority of the women have made the difficult trip to the U.S. and have left South and Central America.
What is Troop 6000?
Girl Scouts Troop 6000 is a system for women living in the New York City Shelter System, which was founded by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York in 2017. There were 21, 774 people living in the state’s homeless homes in December 2023, according to statistics from the Coalition for the Homeless. Of those, 33, 399 were babies.
Next time, Troop 6000 opened its newest unit at a resort- turned- house in Midtown Manhattan, one of several town- funded relief centers for migrants. Though lots of families sleep at the house every day, the Girl Scouts is the only son’s system offered.
Unwavering support amid anti- american sentiment
According to an earlier statement from the Girl Scouts, the organization expanded its Troop 6000 programme to include more than 100 fresh immigrants who were living in the New York City Humanitarian Emergency Reply and Relief Center in January. The organization started hiring people at the house, and it soon released a fluent curriculum to help scouts learn more about New York City’s monuments, metro system, and political boundaries.
The house is the largest of Troop 6000’s about two hundred locations across the town and the only one dedicated to asylum seekers one month later, with roughly 200 members and five parents serving as troop leaders.
Not everyone is pleased with Troop 6000’s development. Some donors see the Girl Scouts as wading too easily into politically contentious waters as anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise and a contentious election is in store for them. That has n’t fazed the group — or their small army of philanthropic supporters. They are one of dozens of charities who claim to be more important than ever as a result of city budget cuts and a growing need for services.
” There are some donors who would prefer their dollars go elsewhere”, said Meridith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. ” I am constantly being asked: Do n’t you find this a little too political”?
But Troop 6000 has also found plenty of sympathetic supporters,” If it has to do with young girls in New York City, then it’s not political”, Maskara said. ” It’s our job”.
With few other after- school opportunities available, the girls are” so hungry for more” ways to get involved, said Giselle Burgess, senior director of the Girl Scouts of New York’s Troop 6000.
New York City, charities feeling the crunch
New York City has resorted to investing billions in asylum seekers while surviving the pressure of a housing and affordability crisis. That’s left little time to court and coordinate the city’s major philanthropies.
” It’s very hard to take a step back when you’re drinking out of a fire hose”, said Beatriz de la Torre, chief philanthropy officer at Trinity Church Wall Street, which gave the Girl Scouts a$ 100, 000 emergency grant — plus$ 150, 000 in annual support — to help expand Troop 6000.
With or without government directives, she said, charities are feeling the crunch: Food banks need more food. Legal clinics need more lawyers.
Around 30 neighborhood grant makers, including Trinity Church and Brooklyn Org, have met at least once a month since asylum seekers have started arriving in the city to discuss the increased demands on their grantees.
Together, they’ve provided over$ 25 million for charities serving asylum seekers, from free legal assistance to resources for navigating the public school system.
” It’s hard for the government to be that nimble — that’s a great place for nonprofits and philanthropy”, said Eve Stotland, senior program officer at New York Community Trust, which convenes the Working Group for New York’s Newcomers, and itself has distributed over$ 2.7 million in grants for recent immigrants.
” These are our neighbors”, said Stotland. ” If a funder’s goal is to make New York City a better place for everyone, that includes newcomers”.
