Girl Scout troop resolved to support migrants despite backlash

NEW YORK — Once a week, dozens of Boy Scouts gather at a downtown Manhattan hotel in a guest room that is homely decorated with string lights and children’s drawings. They earn badges, go on a field trip to the Statue of Liberty and learn to navigate the subway in a city most are only just calling home.

They are the newest members of New York City’s largest Boy Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter where 170,000 asylum seekers and migrants, including tens of thousands of children, have arrived from the southern border since the spring of 2022.

As government officials debate how to handle the influx of newcomers, the Girl Scouts — whose Troop 6,000 has been supporting children living in the shelter system since 2017 — are quietly welcoming hundreds of the city’s youngest new residents with the support of donations. Most of the girls fled the appalling conditions in South and Central America and endured an arduous journey to the US

Not everyone is happy with the evolution of Troop 6000. With anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise and a contentious election looming, some donors believe the Girl Scouts are wading too easily into politically contentious waters. That hasn’t fazed the group — and their small army of philanthropic supporters. Amid city budget cuts and a growing need for services, they are among dozens of charities saying their support for all New Yorkers, including newcomers, is more important than ever.

“If it has to do with young girls in New York City, it’s not political,” said Meridith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. “It’s our job.”

While Troop 6000 has found many sympathetic supporters, “there are some donors who would rather see their dollars go elsewhere,” Maskara says. “I’m constantly asked: Don’t you think this is a bit too political?”

Last year, Troop 6000 opened its newest facility in a hotel-turned-shelter in Midtown Manhattan, one of several city-funded migrant shelters. Although hundreds of families sleep at the shelter each night, the Girl Scouts is the only children’s program offered.

Maybe that’s what made the junk so popular.

Last January, the group began recruiting at the sanctuary and introduced a bilingual curriculum to help Scouts learn more about New York City through its landmarks, subway system and political boundaries.

A year later, with nearly 200 members and five parents as troop leaders, the shelter is the largest of Troop 6000’s roughly two dozen locations across the city and the only one exclusively for asylum seekers.

With few other after-school options 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.

Seven years ago, Burgess, a single mother of six, built Troop 6000 from the ground up after losing her rental home to developers. While living in a hotel-turned-shelter, she got the idea to create a force for girls like her daughters. It was the height of “NIMBYism,” she says, the not-in-my-backyard movement that opposed local homeless shelters.

She asked at the time: “Who is going to give us a chance?”

It turns out that “the donations started pouring in,” she says. A New York Times profile led to a groundswell of philanthropy — plus tens of thousands of dollars in cookie sales — that grew the group from seven girls in a Queens shelter to more than 2,500 scouts and troop leaders at more than two dozen transitional housing sites. the city.

So when the mayor’s office floated the idea of ​​starting a force at the Midtown shelter, the Girl Scouts were ready.

“We already had a model that has really proven to work,” says Maskara, who has raised about $400,000 in an emergency campaign from Trinity Church Wall Street Philanthropies, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

Troop 6000 employs bilingual social workers and a transition specialist skilled in supporting children who have experienced trauma. But otherwise it functions just like any other Boy Scout troop.

Most importantly, Maskara says, the troop offers a glimmer of consistency to children who often have to pack, move and change schools midway through the school year. Scouts are encouraged to continue participating even if their families move.

That wasn’t easy at the Midtown shelter. The average length of stay for a family in the city’s homeless shelter system is one and a half years; in an emergency shelter it often only lasts a few months. At least 40 families have been evicted from the Midtown shelter since January.

“Keeping the girls connected is the most important thing for us right now,” Burgess said. “There is a lot of emotion, frustration and pain.” About 50 scouts who have left the shelter are participating in a virtual troop.

“We want to be able to encourage the girls and let them know that it’s not over yet,” she said. “We’re still here.”

New York City has spent billions on asylum seekers while buckling under the pressure of an existing housing and affordability crisis. This left little time to court and coordinate the city’s most important philanthropic initiatives.

“It’s very difficult to take a step back when you’re drinking from a fire hose,” says Beatriz de la Torre, head of philanthropy at Trinity Church Wall Street, which gave the Girl Scouts a $100,000 emergency grant — plus $150,000 per year. support – to help expand Troop 6000.

With or without government guidelines, she says, charities are feeling the pinch: food banks need more food. Legal clinics need more lawyers.

Since asylum seekers came to the city, about 30 local grant makers, including Trinity Church and Brooklyn Org, have met at least biweekly to discuss the increased demands on their grantees.

Together, they have provided more than $25 million to charities serving asylum seekers, from free legal assistance to resources to navigate the public school system.

“It’s hard for government to be that nimble — that’s a great place for nonprofits and philanthropy,” said Eve Stotland, senior program officer at the New York Community Trust, which convenes the Working Group for New York’s Newcomers, and has distributed more than $2.7 himself. million in subsidies for recent immigrants.

“These are our neighbors,” Stotland says. “If a financier’s goal is to make New York City a better place for everyone, that includes newcomers.”

In a normal year, funding for immigrants makes up a “very, very small” percentage of total grantmaking, says Marissa Tirona, president of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and funding for immigrants actually shrank by 11% between 2012 and 2020 .

During an election year, immigrant services can be even more at risk.

“Migrant families are often used as political pawns,” and some donors may succumb to anti-immigrant fearmongering, Tirona says.

The Girl Scouts are not immune to the backlash, nor is it the first time they have faced criticism from conservative donors.

While Troop 6000 has not been deterred, Maskara says many of her colleagues in the nonprofit world have been afraid to publicly support newcomers.

“What holds them back is the appearance that they are too progressive or too political,” she says. “My answer to that is: you have no idea how many doors will open.”

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Sara Herschander is a reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a philanthropy and nonprofit partnership supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.