Girl Scouts introduce a transportation badge

Young women have long been able to earn Girl Scout badges in areas ranging from crafts and the outdoors to digital arts, healthy living, and financial literacy. Now, those offerings have been expanded to include a program aimed at educating scouts about job opportunities in the trucking industry.

Economists have been warning for years about looming labor shortages among truck drivers, so one industry professional came up with a way to familiarize girls with the field. Ellen Voie, president and CEO of Women in Trucking (WIT), teamed up with the Girl Scouts to create a Women In Trucking patch. "Young girls are a part of the trucking industry's future," Voie said. "This is a great way to expose them to the impact of trucking on their lives, since everything they have has been transported at some point by a truck."

Girls who attend a "Trucks Are for Girls" event talk to experts, drive a simulator, and even climb inside the cab of a big rig. "I didn't know that it was for girls, too," nine-year-old Jaedyn Roemhildt told WIT's Redefining the Road magazine after a recent event. "I thought those trucks weren't fun, but I got in one and it was really fun. I didn't even know they had a horn."

To learn more about Voie's work encouraging women to pursue careers in the trucking industry, read DC Velocity's "Thought Leaders" interview with her.