Next time you buy cookies from your local Girl Scout, it’s possible she’s also been recording podcasts, perfecting her campfire building skills and engaging in hands-on STEM activities at the innovative new Girl Scouts DreamLab in Gonzales. One of only two such facilities in the country, the DreamLab serves troops in the 23-parish Girl Scouts Louisiana East region. Its grand opening was this past Saturday, Aug. 5.
Bright, cheery and designed to appeal directly to Girl Scout troop members, the 5,000-square-foot DreamLab houses programs and equipment that support the Girl Scouts’ four pillars: STEM, life skills, outdoors and entrepreneurship, says GSLE Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Pennington.
DreamLabs are part of a national strategy to create useful and inspiring physical spaces that strengthen relationships between girls and enrich their time in Girl Scouts, a 111-year-old national leadership organization for young women.
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“Past Girls Scouts service centers were very office-heavy, and really weren’t centered around the girl experience,” Pennington says. “In the DreamLab, everything is about the girls.”
The multi-use facility features versatile areas for troops to hold activities. It includes meeting rooms, a mock indoor campfire, a podcast booth, outdoor space for practicing camping skills, a retail store selling apparel and other amenities that make it easier for troops to engage their young members. The facility is also home to the affiliate’s administrative offices.
And while it won’t feature a retail store for cookies (you’ve got to buy those directly from a budding entrepreneur), it will make it more efficient for the 431 troops that comprise Girl Scouts Louisiana East to take on cookie sales.
One of the reasons Girl Scouts Louisiana East was able to become the nation’s second DreamLab pilot site is because it was actively restructuring its physical footprint, Pennington says. The affiliate merged councils in greater Baton Rouge and New Orleans before the pandemic and had been working with the Girl Scouts national office to find ways to reduce overhead and increase efficiency across the super region. In so doing, it sold off council offices in Baton Rouge and New Orleans and a campground with significant maintenance issues.
During the process, it also identified Gonzales as its physical center of operations. Pennington says leaders at the national level encouraged GSLE to apply to be a DreamLab site.
“The fact that we were thinking through these physical space questions is one of things that helped us,” she says. “For a reasonably small region, we are doing really big things.”
The country’s other DreamLab is in Denver, Colorado, and others are expected to follow, Pennington says.
The building cost of the Gonzales DreamLab was about $1.1 million with the national office kicking in $400,000, she adds.
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This week, a link went live for troops across the GSLE region to sign up to use the DreamLab starting Sept. 5. The space accommodates about 100 people at a time.
“If Saturday’s grand opening is any indication, sign-ups will go fast,” Pennington says. “We had a great turnout. The podcast booth in particular was really popular.”
Find more info at gsle.org.