I would heartily recommend a local 4H chapter. Many think of 4H being only for rural kids, but we had an urban club and it was a significant part of my childhood. I learned so many unusual and useful skills and was exposed to great things in that organization.
Are you into nature as a family? See if your state conservation department has a Master Naturalist group. Our MO one was actually just mentioned recently on The Daily Show, oddly enough! The whole family might be able to join and I would say my experience in our local chapter has been the closest thing to church-like community I have had outside of a church in my life.
Agreed that if you can find a greenie group that is a good cohesive, healthy group (no infighting etc.) with a children's program, that would be great! The American
Iris Society, for instance, welcomes youth and has special programs for kids. We have had children hybridizng iris!
But it comes down to what interests your daughter. I think it is critically important to encourage her in activities that grab her imagination and interest. It teaches her to go out into the community and find a group of peers, rather than joining up with just any general group of humans who will then dictate axtivites of the group where she simply follows along, without much real passion.
I guess these two posts of mine finally got to the real point: help your kid find her passions. The self actualized successfully FIRED citizen here keeps busy carrying out that which they love doing. Workong with community organizations is usually part of that.
Totally agree! It was actually 4-H that helped me find some of my passions. I never did scouts, but I imagine it might be similar in that we got to pick multiple "courses" or projects each year and then we had a county-wide competition at the end of the year and if your project got a purple ribbon, it went on to the state fair. While the rural clubs were raising rabbits and pigs, our "city" club got to pick from projects like rocketry, ceramics, electricity, clowning, woodworking, glass etching, crocheting, engines, sewing, tin punch, public speaking, cooking, cake decorating, child care skills, paper making, etc. It was nice because it seemed like we could choose a variety of projects that that might be traditionally geared towards boys or girls but anyone could take them, regardless of gender. Now, I suppose the variety of courses available to any particular club would be limited to the availability of locals able to teach those topics (a lot of them were taught by parents of members with these skills), but all those courses I mentioned were available to us in our little town of 25,000 people and we weren't the only chapter in town.
I gained many life skills, artistic skills and really developed myself as a youngster, I felt. Monthly meetings always featured a special guest speaker from the community that ranged from local authors, foreign exchange students, the mayor, a police officer or other public officials, artists, musicians, historians and wildlife conservation agents (this was always my favorite because they would bring a rehabilitated hawk or owl they would fly over our heads...one of the major experiences that inspired me to a lifelong passion for conservation). They also promote civic development and when you get older you have the opportunity to go on this trip that at the time was called "Citizenship Washington Focus" where you travel on a charter bus with other 4-Hers from around the country to Washington, D.C. and see all the historical sites and participate in a leadership conference.
4-H in my experience was very community oriented. Since so many courses were led by parents, all the families got to know each other pretty well and we made a lot of friends over the years. It was also not very expensive (chapters are often supported through local county extension offices) and we didn't have to sell any cookies or popcorn!
