this is thirty minutes and i'm steve guggenheim boy scouts recently announced plans to open the program fully to girls girls already are in the venture and explorer programs but this explains it to cubs and boy scouts the chief cub scout executive mike served boss says it's not a coed program it's a single gender program but he expects at some point it will be a program that is kind of a hybrid of the two that's according to mike serba the chief scout executive we're going to talk about that today with tiffany falls graf thank you for coming to find a symphony is an expert in this and the reason i say that is she has four children two boys two girls the boys are in the boy scout program the girls are in the girl scout program and tiffany is a leader in both programs tiffany welcome thank you very much for coming tell me what you think of the program the idea of opening it up to girls i think it's phenomenal it's a it's a great thing that they're doing i think the world is changing and i think it's a great opportunity for girls and i think that  now gives them an opportunity to do girl scouts and boy scouts and it's great why do you think it's so great why does it how does a lot of them to do both because they're actually very different programs people like to compare them but you really can't compare them they focus on different things for example girls girl scouts tends to focus on the individual girl and they want to make the girl stronger individual and a strong individual leader  boy scouts tends to have a different approach to leadership boy scouts likes to do a team effort and i think the way that the boy scouts does it is also very good so they're they're different they have a different approach their a systems are different and so to to say one is better than the other is difficult because they're very different so i think the ability to let girls also have a different approach to leadership i think is phenomenal and i think it's great that they'll now have the opportunity to do to do boy scouts do you think this will take girls out of the girl scout program and and a lot of them will move over to have boy scouts maybe a little bit but i don't think a lot i  feel that the girls that will join boy scouts have been disinterested with girl scouts to begin with because i think boy scouts has an approach more outdoorsy has more adventure then girl scouts so i think the girls that will go to the boy scouts has that that adventurous side to them that they're looking for and that they've left girl scouts or they want to do both  i don't think it's going to affect girl scouts that much i think they'll be little impact the chief scout executive mike service says they're really aiming not had girls who are in girl scouts but in families who really don't have their kids in any of the programs and this is a program comes because they he said you know it's a family program correct and you know having my children being in cubs i can understand that but he says they're not trying to take it away from girl scouts they're looking to expand to youth who aren't taking advantage of any of the programs i think so i think it's going to it's going to open open the door because with cub scouts the families are at the events anyway and the little girls are there and they've always been there they've been involved with the plan with derby they have a sibling group in the pinewood derby so now that they can actually earn awards and earn rank they've always been there so i think the impact of a cub scouts is going to be very little because the the girls have always been there because it's been family abundance and i think i think they will get some of the girls that work in anything i discovered are they drop kids off they drop their boys off but what do they do with the girls in this way the families can take both you know boys and girls daughters and sons to the same place absolutely i think it's  be it's going to give families another option and i think that i really feel that the girls will have you know new opportunities in and they'll be able to do things that the girl scouts don't focus on now how do you find being a leader in a girl scouts and a leader and boy scouts tippers for you or does it not so much i think that they both ha great leadership and training for leadership and i think that i kind of take what i learned from both and use it for for all scouting but they are very similar when it comes to training leaders they want leaders trained and they want leaders to make sure that the scouts are learning and that they're safe so i think that when it comes to leadership it's not so different my son who is an eagle scout was telling me just today that he spoke to somebody who has a long involvement in boy scouts and said oh i don't have to take any training for girl scouts and he failed the girl scout program so i guess there's a difference there you know they you know with girl scouts they do focus on another things and so the training is a little bit different but i think that their main goal is to have training leaders to help the scouts progress and have fun that's a that's a an interesting word you picked up i took an advanced boy scout training called wood badge and they said what's missing from many programs is the three word three letter word fun so i'm glad you picked up on that y now if somebody asked me about the program when it when the news came out that how does the gold award the top girl scout award differ from the eagle award the top boy scout awarded the eagle award seems to have a special panache where you don't hear about the cold award it doesn't i don't know why and i can't figure that out because the gold award is the highest level for a girl scouts and  obviously eagles the highest for boy scouts so you would think that they would be on the same level and i think in some aspect they are because they're both hard to attain but i for some reason that eagle scout award once you get it everybody knows about the eagle ward everybody knows how hard it is to achieve and i think people just don't know as much about the gold gold award i think that and the approach is different for example when you start in boy scouts you're working on the path to eagle and you can't just jump in at any time towards the end and say i want to earn a goal and quickly get it for example now that boy scouts will be open to girls my oldest daughter will not have time to earn eagle because of all the requirements to get to eagle and in girl scouts you can actually join in your senior year and you can still attain gold award if you have a project and that project is eighty hours if you create a program and put in the eighty hours the only requirement would be right now is to do two journeys and those are special programs that the girl scouts have created for girl scouts if you if you complete the two journeys you can do your gold gold award so the hours are different  example with the eagle eagle award it's not so much a certain amount of hours where the the gold award is based on hours so if you complete your eighty hours and your journeys award where eagle as you know you have to go through each rank and you have to camp for so many so many nights and earned so many merit badges so there's a whole lot more leading up to eagle so the eagle in my opinion is harder to earn because there's a lot more requirements for the eagle what do you think the gold award has not gotten the publicity that the because it's much harder because eagles much harder or is it just a bad job on the girl scouts and not publicizing it i guess it's not publicized enough so i guess i would have to say that because when you look at the number of girl scouts to boy scouts i think i just read that there's like one point seven million girl scouts and there's a little over two million boy scouts so the numbers are not too far off so i don't think it's the numbers so if i think it must be the publicity i guess are your girls how do you girls fourteen and sixteen will so the fourteen won't be able to do it either she will she will she will have to because you have to start a scout no matter no matter what age you should join boy scouts you still have to go through all ranks you can't skip any of them yes so she will she will have time to complete it and she looking for does she want to do it oh absolutely absolutely she does i think my oldest was a little upset that she wouldn't have time but she never thought that she'd be able to do it anyway so for her it was ok but now my younger daughter has the time in the military to do it so she's definitely going to try i help start and explore a post and the reason is that  girls joined and fact they almost they kind of took over i thought they were over to go to film one ok you know do you think you'll be problems in in putting that girls and boys together well i think boy scouts has done a lot of research and has thought about this a lot that's why what from what i've read so far is that they are going to keep the boys in one unit and the girls in the other unit because i think they are worried about the girls coming in and taking over the leadership so keeping the units all boys and all girls i think will help and then when they go to certain events like film honor or any type of district or council event then they'll be together but i think heaping them separate so that they can all have leadership abilities and all you know work on thing the ranks i think is a good thing i think boy scouts has thought about it and they've they've come up with a solution the way everything i've read it seems that for example with cub scouts don't have there there will be a girl to be boy but the pack don't be together right so for example you know for a day and you know they might meet on a monday afternoon or a tuesday afternoon but the pack meeting maybe once a month on a thursday and that's where everybody will get together but they'll still be separated by their different dens right right and i'm not sure exactly how the troops are going to work if the boy scout level because the troops  work a little different than a pack so i'm not exactly sure how the boy scouts plan to to hold a troop if they are going to have like one troop but have girls meet you know in one section and boys mean another that part is unclear but i think you know having them separate so that they can work on on their ranks and merit badges separately i think is good in an interview i saw with mike served by the chief scout executive he was asked by a gentleman in the midwest about volunteering and what he's disc what they think they're going to find is with the whole family now being involved that they're not going to have trouble getting leaders like maybe they have in the past because yeah yeah which i thought was pretty interesting because you know that's certainly it's always a problem getting enough leaders you know especially in some of the smaller communities around the country right and but they think that this way the whole family's involved so maybe there will be more adult involvement from those families which i thought was kind of interesting it will be interesting and i think it's right because i think families will say ok my kids are here we can all get involved so we went to a camping trip and it turns out the girl scouts were camping in the same area ok and all of the guys were all jealous first of all their campsite was really neat but they had much nicer food much better food so they were kind of jealous of the girls ok you know so so it's kind of going to get interesting to see the two even though you know one executive in the council stress that it's not coed that it says gender separate gender and also mike's are by the chief scout executive said a lot of the camps already you know they have adult leaders like you said with venturing all the a lot of the facilities are already set and put in place so you know it's not like they have to do a lot and i think that there are you know girls  scouting and for example at our council camp bucca nikken there's a lot of girls on staff so they're working with the boys now and so i think it's a good thing that now around the world there's everybody no matter what exactly and i think with the two deep leadership and i think with everybody you know wanting the best for all the scouts i don't think that there's going to be an issue you just brought up too deep leadership i know what it is but i want to explain what it is ok to be leadership it is set up to keep scouts safe and to make sure that there's not one adult with one child  that i feel that sometimes when you have one scout with one adult sometimes the scout feels uncomfortable or they're put in a position where they don't want to be in so if you have to keep leadership it provides that protection for the scout to make sure that everything is all the rules and regulations are followed it's really important and also every leader must take you protection yes you know which is i you know which i i think should be expanded to every youth program in the country and i think it's getting there i think it's getting there you think how do you think the program will expand after this you know what do you where do you see the program in five years in ten years do you think you're going to be hiccups along the way and this oh of course it's something no and i think that you know there's a lot of fear in something new for example i've talked to families that have all girls and i've talked to families that are all boys and they're afraid of change they think that if boy scouts are open to girls that it's going to change the program and that it's not going to have the same the same thing to boys it's not going to be able to offer the same program which i don't think is true and there's girls that feel that girl s boys why would you put girls in with boys they know they need separation and i feel that i think it's a great thing and i think when kids are together and they they learn things together i think it creates more of a mutual respect and in schools there together by school is different because they have to sit there and they have to listen to the teacher but when they're actually learning something hands on more than what they do in school and they're learning merit badges i think it's it's phenomenal because the merit badges are more hands on than anything that they do it school and for them to be working side by side i think there's more of a mutual respect and i think that will help help them in their careers in the future working with girls and having more respect for each other they're already in religious school together they're in classrooms together so you know but sometimes i think some boys feel they can't force the right phrase just be themselves you know without oh i have to as maybe maybe it's more boy scouts than cub scouts well i think there's going to be opportunities for them to be you know with you know mix or by saying that ok they're still going to be boy scouts that are all boy troops and you know there's the girls are separate they'll still have that opportunity just to do things with just voice so they're still going to have that separation they're still going to have that opportunity to just relax and not worry about having girls around one thing he stressed is that if if a troop wants to stay just boys they can they're not no they're not being forced know have girls come in if they don't want to write and i think some will stay that way and i think some will continue being all boys it's kind of interesting to see the boy scouts do this because society is changing so much  yes he's he's excited and he he's open to the girls he feels that hey more power to you go ahead get eagle so he does not have a problem with it my younger son was like oh girls how old is he he's ten ok so it's understandable so he feels that oh i don't know about girls i don't know if i want them in my den so they will be in his den exactly exactly so when we he found out that it was not in his den and and he said well the girls are at our pack meeting anyway and they're having fun with us and i don't have a problem he just wanted his den to stay all boys and it's going to correct you know who knows what'll happen is eagle and so he's he's you know as long as he can still have his boy done he said that's fine with him he can you know girls earning rank and and he thought it was pretty cool he said no so now they can actually  that was so he didn't think they could earn anything before now no so he he thought that was pretty cool now one of the things in pushing kids you have to get eagle by the age of eighteen correct one of the things that i know a lot of scout leaders to push their their scouts to get ego because when they turn fifty sixteen and seventeen all of a sudden two reasons a lot of them don't get it or are girls and driving so it's going to be interesting to see if that's still the case you know whether whether there's still going to be you know well if girls are in the troop well maybe they'll stay in though you know i right ok yeah and i think there's a lot of different things tugging on them school you know sports and music and all different things pulling on them so i know we had talked to my older son very early on in a scouting program and said if this is something that you want to attain you should try to do as much as you can in a timely fashion because if you leave too much to the end it's going to be difficult the older you get there is more time constraints and you'll have a harder time so his goal and he set this not us he wanted to have it by the time that he was sixteen and he was pretty close he was a little over sixteen and he he was able to get it done and i have friends that their son waited until their senior year and it was very difficult because they're looking at colleges so it's not only driving and girls but it's also looking at colleges so they had a hard time getting all of it wrapped up his senior year well i know a lot of colleges i had one one scout in our troop american university told him he was on the edge of getting into american and they said you get your eagle you're in you don't you're not wow oh yeah yeah but then my son got into bed school with the help of being an eagle scout so it is important how did you know i know your husband is heavily involved in scouting yes he's an eagle scout yes he is how did you can fall because it was just you know because of your husband or absolutely because my husband or my son they were it all started a day camp day camp they needed help and at the time i still had little ones in tow so my first year i did not help out but then after everybody was growing and we got more involved and i started helping out on the pack level and then i helped out in up to camp now do you think if girls were allowed back then you would have gotten involved in girl scouts also i think so because my girls enjoy girl scouts ok they they like being in the in the troop in the girl scout troop and they have fun with their girls their girlfriends they're very scouts and i think that they've enjoyed it  and i think they would i think they would now you're old you're younger group daughter do you think she'll get the gold award and  she does plan to do or gold award and she does want to to to do eagle so be interesting to see who will do you think should be able to you think somebody will be able to i mean that's a big commitment to do both you've got eighty hours on it the gold award and you've got and you've got you know all the time going through all the ranks you know before you can get to you know yes he go to life to eagle i think they would definitely offers merit badges that that program you can't you can't match it's what they get out of merit badges and earning their ranks is a measurable and i think it's a great program i'm excited for it i'm excited for the girls now merit badges can you explain those for those who people don't know ok merit badges are programs that do you know the number that they offer it's over one hundred metres that it's well into the hundreds yes maybe two hundred i don't know it's changing on a regular basis backley so merit badges offers girls offers anybody the ability to learn something new there's welding there's swimming there's first aid merit badges anything that you can think of they they offer and that's a it's a program that is in the book and it tells them all the steps they need to complete and then merit badge and they have people that are in that field that are experts to help them are in their and boy scout leader well and about the future of scouting and girls in scouting i'm steve guggenheim and you're watching thirty minutes on princeton community