NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — Once a week in a midtown Manhattan hotel, dozens of Girl Scouts gather in a spare room made homey by string lights and children’s drawings.

They earn badges, go on field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and learn how to navigate the subway in a city most of them have just begun to call home.

These children are the newest members of New York City’s largest Girl Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter intended for asylum seekers and migrants, including children, who have arrived from the U.S. southern border.

As government officials debate how to handle the influx of new arrivals, the Girl Scouts — whose Troop 6000 has served girls living in the shelter system since 2017 — have been quietly welcoming this particular group of people for months. Most of the girls who have joined the troop recently are among families who have fled dire conditions in South and Central America.

This happened as Troop 6000 opened a branch at a hotel-turned-shelter in Midtown Manhattan, one of several city-funded relief centers for migrants. Though hundreds of families sleep at the shelter every night, the Girl Scouts is the only children’s program available on site.

Not everybody is happy about the deliberate step toward assisting newly arrived migrant families.

While Troop 6000 found plenty of sympathetic supporters, “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: Don’t you find this a little too political?”

But amid city budget cuts and a growing need for services, they are among dozens of charities that say 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, then it’s not political,” Maskara said. “It’s our job.”

Last January, Troop 6000 began recruiting at the shelter and presented a bilingual curriculum to help scouts learn more about New York City’s monuments, subway system, and local government borders. One year later, with nearly 200 members and five parents as troop leaders, the shelter is the largest of Troop 6000’s roughly two dozen sites across the city and the only one exclusively serving asylum-seekers.

Giselle Burgess, senior director of the Girl Scouts of New York’s Troop 6000, said the newly arrived girls were eager to get involved, given that there were few other after-school opportunities available.

The unique troop began seven years ago with Burgess, a single mother. She had lost rental housing and her family was living in a hotel turned into a shelter, when she got the idea of organizing a scout troop for girls like her daughters.

A New York Times profile lead to publicity and philanthropy — along with tens of thousands of dollars in cookie sales. The troop grew from seven girls in Queens to more than 2,500 scouts and troop leaders based at over 20 temporary housing sites across the city. So when the mayor’s office considered the idea of bringing Girl Scouts to the Midtown shelter, Troop 6000 was ready.

“We already had a model that has really proven to work,” says Maskara, who 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 versed in supporting children who’ve experienced trauma. But other than the specialty support, the organization operates much like any other Girl Scout troop.

Most importantly, says Maskara, the troop offers consistency to children who may be forced to pack up, move homes, and switch schools in the middle of the academic year. Scouts are encouraged to continue participating even if their families move.

That hasn’t been easy at the Midtown shelter, which is considered emergency housing and families stay for weeks to a few months. To compare, the average length of stay for a family in the city’s regular homeless shelter system is a year and a half.

Around 50 scouts who moved out of the Midtown shelter now participate in a virtual troop.

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

Follow NEWSnet on Facebook and X platform to get our headlines in your social feeds.

Copyright 2024 NEWSnet and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.