She grew up in a small New England town with a one-room library. When she was about 11 years old, a few of her friends got together to organize a fair to benefit their local library. That first year Barbara Van Essen and her childhood comrades earned $17 with their little fundraiser in a friend’s backyard. They would go on to continue putting on Library Benefit Fairs for three more years—moving it to the town hall next to the library and adding to it each year. “I have a copy of the long list of books for children and young adults that the library was able to buy with the proceeds of our last fair,” Van Essen shares. Between her book-loving, philanthropic endeavors and becoming a Girl Scout, from second grade through high school—earning the First Class award, which was the highest award for girls in Girl Scouts at the time—Van Essen has grown to become an avid humanitarian, mentor and heroine for young women in her community.

When she and her husband moved to southwest Florida years later, one of the first things she did was look for a Girl Scout troop for her daughter. “I volunteered to help the leader and, a few months later, she asked me to take over the troop for her,” she says. “I led my daughter’s troop from third grade through high school ,with seven of the girls earning the Gold Award, which is the highest award a girl in Girl Scouts can earn now.” Van Essen began to take on other Girl Scout volunteer roles at the county level: organizing large events for girls, training new leaders, continuing to mentor as the girls from her troop headed off to college. In 1997, she was asked to join the staff of the Council, Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida. “At first, I was charged with planning events for the older Girl Scouts throughout the Council which served girls from Manatee County to Collier,” she says. “Then, my position became more focused on serving girls in our lowest income communities in Collier, Lee, Hendry and Glades Counties.” 

After retiring from her full time position in 2017, after almost 20 years, Van Essen realized that the Gulfcoast’s Girl Scout program in Immokalee—a small town northeast of Naples—would not be able to continue without someone to oversee it. The majority of the families there have come from Mexico, Guatemala or Haiti to work in agriculture. Van Essen didn’t want to see the 230-some Girl Scouts in Immokalee, or the ones who would follow them, lose their opportunity to participate in Girl Scouts. So she stayed on to continue working with them in her free time. “Whenever I take the younger Girl Scouts from Immokalee to Naples for an event or a trip to the zoo, we also go to the Naples Pier so the girls can walk out and see the Gulf of Mexico and the dolphins and pelicans,” she says. “For more than half of them, it’s their first time to see the beach, even though they live less than an hour away. And camping is most girls’ first time away from home overnight. I love their excitement when they get to cook the meals, go canoeing or do archery."

Van Essen has also taken older Girl Scouts to see our state government at work in Tallahassee, to tour the White House (years ago when that was possible), horseback riding, white water rafting in North Carolina, and even to Pennsylvania to represent our Council at a large national Girl Scout event where her group of eight girls chose from workshops on STEM topics, career planning, arts, sports and more. “At that event, our group of girls—whose families were from Haiti, Mexico and Ecuador, as well as the USA—performed a dance which they had carefully choreographed to a medley of popular songs representing each of their cultures,” she says. But by far the most exciting trip for her she was able to arrange, was a five day bus trip where a group of about 25 high school girls got to tour seven U.S. colleges and participate in sessions with college staff about admissions, financial aid, dorm life, choosing a major, etc.

“One thing that really moves me is when I hear from a girl who was in one of my Immokalee troops years ago,” Van Essen says. “One of my alumni had a scholarship to attend college in Michigan. She earned her degree and went on to law school. She has now passed her bar exam and is practicing law in Michigan. She told me her parents worked long hours to keep food on the table and weren’t interested in the kids having fun. She said she wouldn’t have had a childhood if it hadn’t been for Girl Scouts and wouldn’t have learned about community service.”

Van Essen has kept in touch with many of her alumna over the years—even as the young girls grow into successful women—including one who is traveling the nation for her job, one who is teaching in North Carolina, one who teaches locally, one who just finished her nursing training in New York and one who recently joined the team of Gulfcoast Girl Scout leaders in Immokalee. “Hearing about all their successes is what means the most to me,” Van Essen says. The program has finally restarted in-person Girl Scout troops in Immokalee after over a year of having to trade experiential field trips for Zoom meetings with the girls. “It’s so fun to finally see the girls again,” she says. “I can’t wait to start taking them camping and on field trips again.”