Drop-in Sessions for Gold Award

As many of you know, the Older Girl Committee/Gold Award Interview Committee hosts a Sunday drop in session several times a year.  This is meant to be used by the girls who have completed their Journey, and are working towards completing their Gold Award application.

Talking with the other Committee members, afterwards, I was struck by the variety of projects, girl maturity, understanding of the requirements, and the progress that each girl had made toward thinking through her potential project.

Part of our job is to be encouraging and supportive. And another part is to really get the girl to describe what she wants to do, with whom and how.  And yet another part is to reinforce page 2 of the Gold Packet entitled "Standards of Excellence."  This is the standard to which all Gold Award Projects are held.  We encourage ALL girls to use this Tool Kit tool as they work on sussing out their projects.

One girl had an idea for a group garden.  She had a real passion for sustainability in the gardening/compost/food sense of the word!  I think her issue was about how everyone needs nutritious food. And she had the research to show how starting with youngsters ages 9-12, can help to ensure they know about and can produce good food!  This girl was using her resources wisely, and had already found out how to apply for a Seed Grant.  She already had a group garden space to use, and she had identified two youth organizations to partner with.  Truly, she was on the right track!  We talked for about 15 minutes, about different ideas, how to use the food, how to measure success and how to ensure sustainability.

Another girl had her heart in the right place, wanting to provide activities for a group at her church with similar interests.  This one had some good ideas, but no clear root cause or solution. Plus, it would only affect 15 people.  Truly, a nice service project, but not a Gold one.  We sent her back to think bigger!  Use her passion for what she's interested in, and figure out how to make a more sustainable change in her community.  I think she'll figure it out!

And yet another, had an idea of helping kids get adopted.  A noble cause to be sure, but maybe not one that a teenaged girl could actually do.  But what could she do?  What would be a way to take this girl's passion for helping unadopted kids and make a Gold Award Project?  We chatted about having a "Successful Adoption Day", but realized that was a Service Project - only making a difference for one day.  We also talked about providing resource lists for adoptive parents, but didn't know what was already out there for them.  We sent the girl back to do some research, to see what she could do to make sustainable change in this arena,  and to identify the root cause she wanted to address.

Truly, I'm looking forward to seeing how these 3 applications come back, and how the girls will Take Action.