I'm an advisor for a couple Gold Award girls, and I just had the extreme pleasure of signing the final report for two of my girls. These girls are as different as night and day! Both did a great job, and both had a HUGE learning curve about how things might not go as well as they had planned, not due to their lack of effort, though!
Sam's project Took Action with a local elementary school. She had a plan to educate the kids about all sorts of environmental waste, create a no-waste zone, hold an e-waste drive to raise funds for recyling units at the school. She had a great plan, support from the VP and the Science teachers. And while she was able to reach sooo many kids, the part of her plan that the VP was going to help with, fell through. I bet he just ran out of time. And the part of doing the e-waste drive didn't work, due to the e-waste truck canceling the night before. An alternate plan at a local JC fell through, when the school didn't perceive that there was enough benefit to the school to do it.
Wow! Nothing Sam did was bad, and she sadly learned that those she was counting on, and had confirmed, didn't do their parts. Her comment was, "well, maybe I set my expectations too high? Maybe my goals were unrealistic?" She was still able to complete her Project, leaving the VP and school with her curriculum to be repeated this school year, and the VP has assured her that he will! But if everything had gone as she originally planned, she sure would have been much happier with the results.
For Lori, after she'd completed her Project, when I asked, "well, what would you do differently?" she had a rush of ideas of how much better the club could be, and what she was going to do this year! As part of her Take Action Project she started a DV Club at her HS, and she was the President. For the coming year, she will still be the President, but she will have other officers elected to work on different jobs, leading one meeting a month, etc. so she doesn't have to do everything. More speakers, more information about Safe Dating to give to her HS. She learned that letting your team help is a good thing! She learned that using her leadership in a different way could get her better results.
They've both done some growing up! Sam is a freshman in college, and Lori is going into 11th grade with a whole slew of AP and IB classes. These girls are both smart and nice, and they are both committed to making the world a better place. I'm very proud of both of them.
Does everyone
know what GAM is? Our council hosts one every May, to give Sr/A Girl
Scouts the chance to get together and compete in a variety of
ways...tying knots, singing songs, swimming, boating races, and more.
And to help girls get ready, we are offering a ToGetHer Boating Practice event on October 21, 2012 at the Newport Dunes. You can download the flyer from our website:
https://sites.google.com/site/togetherboating.
Anne
Rizzacasa and I are co-chairing the day, with a great committee, and we
are VERY excited about offering in-water boating skills for our girls:
Sabot
Rowboat
Kayak
Canoe
And also some land skills:
Knots
Bell Time
Compass and Relative Bearing
So,
come one come all! If you have 8th grade and above girls, they are
welcome to come learn some new skills and practice on the water. We'll
have certified life guards and small craft instructors to teach and
supervise. Even if you think you're not ready for GAM competition, come
on down anyway, and have fun with us.
Registration is required, and yes, all participants get the patch! Would love to see you there!
Well, I knew I'd
been busy: plenty of changes in the last month....sold my kitchen,
closed my catering business, moved office stuff and props to the house,
and worked on Mom's accounts...oh, and volunteered with Girl Scouts!
Whew! No excuse, but I think I just lost my rhythm of when to blog.
Fixing that, as of today!
I've been hearing of many projects that girls are thinking about for their Gold Award Take Action Projects. Many of them are really nice service projects, but the vast majority are projects that hold to the standard of the Gold Award. These girls plan to Take Action and change the world. Or at least their small piece of it!
But I've also had odd things come up. One was a girl who I interviewed a while ago. She had a good start to her project, but she needed to flesh it out, get her team, and make it a more robust Take Action plan. I didn't hear back, til out of the blue, I got her revisions, and I was surprised to learn that she had already started her project! This is definitely not okay! Please remind your girls that they need to get the "green light" and be marked as "approved" BEFORE they may begin their Take Action.
I know that has been difficult for some, especially when their projects are so date dependent. And this one did have a very near date for the roll-out. We're working it out, and had she been approved at the last interviews, she would have had time to proceed in a systematic way. But because she waited til the last minute to get her revised app back to me, which also involved me requesting more information, she was up against it.
We're working it out, but it is certainly not an ideal situation. And if her original project had not changed, I would have been in the very awkward position of declining to approve her application, yet again, while she had already invested time and energy into it. And that would have been really tough on both sides!
So, please, work with your girls to turn in good applications, and then work with them to get their required revisions (if any) back into the interviewer in a timely manner. It will just be so much less drama, all the way around!
"Girl Scouts is here to serve ALL girls!"
"And we need to reach them at their level. In their faces!"
"Even one year of Scouts can make a difference in a girl's life."
"Girls are worth our investment!"
Anna-Maria Chavez
GSUSA CEO
(Posted this morning while Ms. Chavez was speaking.)
I have to say, she was pretty darn wonderful in person! Tall and in heels, elegant and warm, friendly and caring. What a great representative to the general public for Girl Scouting.
She "gets it" so intrinsically, and she challenged all of us to reach out, to mentor and help our girls grow and succeed. She's thrown down the gantlet, to end gender discrimination in a generation. Wow! A big job to do, and if every past and present Girl Scout took up her message, I bet it will happen! I know I'm going to make the extra effort, because our girls are worth it!!!!
I'm very proud to belong to this wonderful organization. And very happy to be a sister to this (and every) Girl Scout, for sure!
CEO Nancy Nygren said it's ok to blog while GSUSA CEO Ana-Maria Chavez talks to us about how important Girl Scouting is to
the world. She is a passionate speaker, and she is a mighty force to be sure.
Her
message really resonates with me: we need to fight for our girls. We need to fight for our
girls, for them to have the opportunity to succeed.
The Gold Award is one way we can push our girls to use
their skills and succeed. But we need to start while they're young! We need ToGetHerThere!
She is asking adults to stand up for girls! "My fish is not going to be the next president of the
United Stated.". But one of our girls WILL be!
