Founding meeting of the first Girl Scout troop

On the same historic day of March 12, 1912, Juliette Gordon Low convened a gathering at her Savannah carriage house, inviting girls associated with her cousin Nina Pape's school, the Low Home School. This informal but momentous meeting is remembered as the founding meeting of the first Girl Scout troop in the United States.

At this gathering, Low introduced the girls to the concepts and activities she had observed and helped organize in Britain's Girl Guide movement—badges for skill-building, outdoor activities, community service projects, and a Promise and Law emphasizing honor, duty, and helping others. For girls in early twentieth-century America, largely excluded from the parallel Boy Scout movement founded just two years earlier, this represented an unprecedented opportunity for structured leadership training and outdoor education.

The event is historically significant not merely as an isolated meeting but as the genesis point of an organization that would grow to become one of the largest and most influential girls' and women's organizations in world history. Low's vision—drawing on her international experience, personal wealth, and social connections—transformed a small gathering of Savannah girls into an organization whose legacy includes cookie sales entrepreneurship programs, outdoor leadership training, and civic engagement initiatives still active over a century later.