No Lone Rangers!

One can acquire everything in solitude -- except character."
--Stendhal, French writer

Truly, we want our girls to become girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place!  And they don't do this in a vacuum!!!

The Gold Award Take Action Project challenges the girl to identify her issue, zero in on the root cause, and then make a plan to address the need.  She also needs to gather a team of people to help her achieve the goal.  These can be adults who work with the agency, parents, troop leader/advisors and teachers at school, to name a few. But this also means that she needs to gather a team of her PEERS to accomplish the task.

Her Take Action Project should be large enough to need peeps!  (people=helpers=workers)  And the Gold Award girl needs to be the girl leader in the girl led process.  She is the one who needs to galvanize the troops to work together, cooperatively, to achieve the goal. Our Gold girl needs to be a leader, probably a manager too, but a leader who sets the big goal and then encourages/facilitates the way for the goal to be achieved.  She takes the responsibility to ensure success, but she doesn't do it alone:  there are others helping.

When we interview girls, we often say, but where's your leadership?  And we hear a litany of scheduling times, writing thank you notes, organizing something, etc.  That's management! And while every project needs some management, a leader is the one who is going to make sure the team is doing the work, and that's our Gold girls!

Encourage your girls to lead.  They've had a whole slew of practice as they've moved up the Girl Scout ladder, and now is the time to show what they've learned.  And encourage them to think in terms of the team and the team's success in accomplishing a goal.  Very rarely can one girl, all by herself, make the impact that a whole team of girls can.