Coming up with Plan B

"To have a good idea, have a lot of them."  

Thomas Edison

American Inventor

This felt like a good quote this week!  One of the things we ask our Gold Award girls to do, is to identify an issue, brainstorm a possible solution, gather a team and put the plan into play.

But what happens when that great idea has no traction?  No organization wants to partner?  The solution to the need, while a good idea, just doesn't fit? What does the girl do then?

This happened with one of our girls last summer, working on the Girltopia Take Action Project.  Her issue was about domestic violence, and she had an idea about a project that she would like to do for a local shelter. She thought she had some initial buy-in from the organization, so she started her plan, gathered her team and did the needed steps to start the work.

Turns out, the organization didn't want/need what she wanted to do!  It was truly frustrating, and while not a waste of time, it certainly didn't yield the result the girl was hoping for.  She was soooo disappointed, especially because she only had the one plan to pursue.  She had put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak, and she lost them all!

Thomas Edison would probably have suggested that once the issue was identified, it would have been a good idea to ALSO identify several possible solutions or plans for how to address it.  So that if the first doesn't work, there's some groundwork to fall back on.  Plan B can become Plan A. 

Is this a good idea for our Gold Award girls?  Is it good tool to use as we work with these girls:  to try and get them to think of several possible ways to address the issue?  Not trying to make more work for anyone here, that's for sure. But, perhaps it's a good idea at the beginning of the process.  It might lead to a deeper and more complete understanding of the complexity of some issues.

Teaching Tennis is a Good Start

“In Texas, M--- High School junior and Girl Scout Ambassador Katy B---- held a camp to teach elementary school children tennis to earn the GS of S--- Council Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can achieve.” from the GSUSA blog, quoting a local reporter.

This was posted a couple months ago, in one of those daily blog blasts from GSUSA.  And I remember thinking, “That’s a GOLD project?  How lame!”  But then GSLE Specialist Lesley Finch said, “but you don’t know what else she did!”  And that hatched an idea to hypothesize on what really went on to make this a full and robust Gold Award Project.

I wonder if Katy is a great HS tennis player?  And I wonder if she is really committed to healthy living?  If so, perhaps the root issue she identified was around kids being too sedentary, not getting up off the couch and away from the TV/computer enough.  So she wanted to give the kids a fun athletic experience that they could continue to draw on during their lives?

That would have been a good start!  And then she could have enlisted the help not only of her school teammates, but of other players in her club/region to help provide her program.  Katy could have done some community mapping to see if tennis was available to all kids?  And perhaps sleuthed out an under-served population of kids who could benefit from the exposure.

She would have had to use her leadership to gather the volunteers together with the tennis court property, create a curriculum to teach, and figure out a way that her project could go on after she was finished.  That sustainability piece might be picked up by her club, the tennis facility or another entity, but Katy would be the one to put it altogether for someone else to use.

Besides teaching the basic skills and tennis rules, Katy could have enhanced her project with flyers about healthy living and examples of easy to do exercises for the kids to take home.  The kids could share it with older siblings, parents and neighbors, which would be great, and positively impact other people as well.

Maybe Katy set this up this program for everyone to attend?  And there were other vendors/info booths about healthy living and diet.  Perhaps even a piece on how to warm up before playing a sport?  What to do if you are injured.  How can you be healthy and play safely.   So the kids AND the adults had take-away information to help them both.

I’m hoping that Katy also celebrated the completion of her project!  That she could see that the work she did created positive results not only in the population she served, but for her team as well. 

Now THAT would have been one heckuva Gold Award Project!

Learning - a life skill

“Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill.”

Tony Buzan, author and educational consultant

 I like that quote this morning!  Learning how to learn is certainly a skill to be developed early, so that we can use it our whole lives.  And as we get older, we take trainings that have us identify how we learn best, and how we can reinforce new information to replace the old.  (And we commiserate together about how easy it used to be!!)

But for our Gold girls, they are still learning how to learn.  They’re trying to figure out how to remember information for a math test on Tuesday, how to put together a science fair project and how to strategize to improve their soccer games.  While one goal is to pass a test, another is to figure out how to make the data stick, then write about it in a coherent way, and how to take the information, synthesize it and come out with a well-reasoned analysis. 

As part of our GSLE program, we are helping these girls to do just that!  We are asking the girls to identify an issue. It could be one that they already know about, or it could be one that they find as they investigate their community.  As advisors, we need to help guide them in this process and engage their critical thinking as they LEARN about an issue and the pieces that go with it. 

As we know, and the girls will find out, no one issue stands alone!  The root issue to address may be homeless kids on the street, but investigation and community mapping will identify other issues: lack of education and healthcare, mental illness, local economic situation, lowered expectations, etc.  The Gold girls must take all this info and LEARN how they can address the issue, create a plan and take action.

Again, this is more than a collection project, though providing toiletries, clothes and blankets could be a part, this is a TAKE ACTION project that needs to be more.  As advisors, we need to guide the girls to reach higher and Take Action now.

They also need to learn how their efforts can move on into the future.  How what they did can be sustained by others, upon completion.  And they need to take what they’ve done and learned to address the more global perspective. 

We’re asking our girls to put their passion into a project that makes the world a better place. What a great thing to learn!

Eisenhower and Leadership

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because they want to do it."

                           Dwight D. Eisenhower

I received this quote in my inbox today, and I thought, how appropriate to also talk about this for out Gold Award girls!

We’re asking these girls to identify a root cause, to do some research in their community, and to really evaluate what the need is, and how they can help to fill it.  The starting place is the issue, not the project!

The next piece is for the Gold girls to gather non-troop (mostly) volunteers who also feel passionately about the cause. And these are the peeps she will be leading to complete her project. There could be an element of educating peers about the issue, and asking for volunteers who are moved by the topic.  It could be as simple as addressing a club with like-minded mission to step up and volunteer.  Either way, she is going to have to use her leadership to make this happen!

And she’ll need to hone her skills to get her volunteers on board, and to have them be valued contributors to her project.  It sure seems like the more they are vested in the issue, the more likely the volunteers will be to help. And the more likely it seems that they will also spread the word about the issue being addressed and it’s potential solutions.

While the Gold girl is going to have to manage time and meetings, we also need to guide her to LEAD!  Let others do some the work, and learn how to best acknowledge and reward their successes.  Afterall, the better the volunteers are led, the better likelihood of a well developed and executed Gold Award Take Action Project!