Joanne Loritz

Joanne is the leader for Girl Scout Troop 56. We have 8 girls who are Brownies and 4 Daisy Girl Scouts. I’m constantly amazed at how much work it takes to be a leader now. Joanne spends hours each week on paperwork, phone calls, research and organizing. We’ve had field trips, educational speakers and camping trips. Girl Scouting isn’t just a twice a month deal with our troop — through Joanne’s efforts, these girls are thinking about scouting all the time.

Service Projects are very important to Joanne. She helps the girls complete at least one (and often several) each month. The girls wrote 191 letters to the troops and have 14 service men and women pen pals now in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Baltic Sea, and Alaska. They sold 85 boxes of cookies in their “Cookies for Troops” drive during the recent cookie sale that they will be sending with letters and pictures. At Christmas the girls decorated Christmas trees and sang at the Yountville Veteran’s Home as well as at a local hospital. Participating in the Fourth of July Parade and singing patriotic songs with residents of a nursing home; collecting warm coats, Toys for Tots, and toiletries for the local Women’s Emergency Shelter; and picking up litter in our local waterways during Coastal Clean-Up Day were some of the service projects she organized for our girls and our community.

Joanne also is the Napa Service Unit Director. She generally puts in an hour or two (or even three or four) each night when she gets home from work to help organize things for an upcoming meeting or event. In many ways, it’s a part time job immediately following her full day at the clinic. . Joanne, as a physician, has been the “Camp Doctor” at various Girl Scout overnight expeditions. In January she organized a letter exchange service unit wide with letters from girls in troops throughout California and the USA in addition to England, South Korea, and Japan.

However the biggest thing Joanne worked on this year was getting the Presidential Volunteer Award for the Napa Girl Scout leaders who put in so much time for their girls. Doing the paperwork for a hundred people to get the award was a job in itself. The Awards Ceremony was also a major event to coordinate but a great time was had by all.