Celebrate Leadership!

 

Celebrate Leadership!

Nominate a Girl Scout in K-12th grade to serve as a representative of GSOC.  The Celebrate Leadership event and program are designed to illustrate to the community who we are, what they do, and why it matters.
  

Nomination Information
·         Tell us about a Girl Scout that you know who has developed specific leadership qualities in Girl Scouts and how these qualities have helped them to achieve a dream, change the world, or take action to make the world a better place.
·         Girls in K-12th grade may be nominated by a parent, troop leader, or other adult or may choose to self-nominate.
·         Selected girls will have various opportunities to represent GSOC and share their story with our community, including being paired with 12 women Honorees who will be recognized as leaders in our community.
·         Girls will be expected to participate in 2-3 rehearsals, a special event with women honorees, and the Celebrate Leadership event on October 26, 2012 at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach.
·         Nomination forms are available now on the Volunteer Network.
·         Nominations include 1 complete nomination form, 2 reference forms,  and 1 essay and/or picture.
·         The deadline for girl nominations is May 22, 2012.
·         Please contact Lesley Finch with questions: lfinch@girlscoutsoc.org.

What a great way to recognize the accomplishments of our girls....

 

100th Anniversary Art Quilt

 


 
Is this a great art quilt, or what?  A Girl Scout, good friend and fiber quilt artist, Jamie Fingal just finished this quilt for the 100th Anniversary.  I just love it!  

I asked her why it resonates so much with me?  And she responded, that it's the happy colors!  I think it's also that my First Class Pin is in it (top left corner) as well as my original GS pin.  Good memories from my youth.

Jamie has donated this art quilt to our Adult Recognition Lunch event as an Opportunity Prize.  If you're there, you can buy a special ticket, and have a chance to win. There will only be one winner, and we will announce that person at the event.

Put the date on your calendar (if it isn't already) and send in a reservation ASAP!  
June 3, 2012. Disneyland Hotel.

Does Size Matter?

 Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win."
--Jonathan Kozol,
American writer, educator and activist 

I like that quote for this morning.  I was thinking about Gold Award interviews, on the drive in this morning, and about our last Gold Award Advisor Training we had a week ago.  One of the things the class asked was about size, and does it really matter?

A Gold Award Girl Scout is asked to identify an issue that she is interested in.  And then she's asked to drill down to the root cause of that issue.  Those issues can be huge, and so can the root causes.  What the girl is asked to do is to figure out how she can make a local difference in her community.  And this could be defined as state? county? city? school district? school?  

She needs to make a difference in the defined community.  Her project needs to be reasonable and achievable, not easy, and a stretch.  The girl needs to figure out what to do in the huge arena of possibilities, and then plan what how to address her issue.

Winning is not really the point, but achieving her goal is!  Our Gold Award girl needs to make a measurable change in her chosen community, and she needs to ensure its sustainability for the future.  At the end, she needs to celebrate her "win"/success and SEE that she made a difference.  Acknowledge her success and share it with others.

What do we advisors/leaders/parents do?  Help her get there! Serve as a resource, help her think it through and give her the support she needs to do the work.  But not do it for her!  It's all on the girl, and we know she can do it!!!

This is a Gold Award Project?

The Baltimore Sun reports that Alyssa Judson and Molly Wheltle, members of Troop 3122 for about a dozen years each who will age out of the Girl Scouts at the end of the school year, earned their Girl Scout Gold Award for completing separate service projects in the fall that aided underprivileged Baltimore City residents.

For her project, Alyssa Judson made a series of presentations to youth in Baltimore City and Baltimore County about homelessness in the city.

Additionally, she collected a dozen blankets and sleeping bags at St. Mark School and worked with Scouts in Troop 984 at Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church to make six 6- by 6-foot quilts and seven fleece blankets. The blankets and sleeping bags were later donated to Southwest Emergency Services in Arbutus.

Using media both old and new, Wheltle helped make First Communion extra special for 85 girls at the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown.

The senior at Mount de Sales Academy advertised her collection drive of First Communion dresses in five parish bulletins, on a Facebook page and website and through word of mouth. By the end of the project, she had far exceeded her goal. "I was really excited we got 85 dresses. I expected 20," Wheltle said.

(from the GSUSA blog)

Truly, I hope that these collection projects were not ALL the girls did!  But if we believe the Baltimore Sun....

Alyssa's project sounds more robust, and I'm hoping that she started with the issue of homelessness, and then drilled down to the root cause, and THAT is what she made her series of presentations about.  Did she stress the importance of developing more safe shelters for women on the street?  address funding needs from local government?  provide safety info for women and families who are homeless?  create a mentoring/partner program of organizations with one demographic of the homeless population.  Truly, I hope she did something that was meaningful to her, but that was also measurable and sustainable.  Collecting the blankets was a nice add-on, and I certainly hope that very few of her hours were spent on collecting.  Using her leadership should have taken up the majority of her project hours.  And I wonder how she planned for sustainability?

Molly's project sounds like all she did was collect First Communion dresses.  A very nice service project, but it falls short of being Gold quality.  I wonder what her issue was?  And how she identified a root cause, and then created a plan to address it?  I hate to think that she just saw a need to collect the outfits, and stopped there.  I'm hoping that she worked with her Project Advisor to go through the Standards of Excellence on page 2 of the Gold Award Guidelines to create a robust Gold Award Project.  I do hope!

Sustainability Counts!

 

Welcome Barb Christenson as our guest blogger today. Barb serves with me on the Older Girl Committee and as a Gold Award Interviewer for the council...among the many hats she wears!  Her topic today is sustainability.  Read on... 

The main meanings for sustain found in dictionaries are to “maintain," "support," or "endure.”  Does this mean that a Girl Scout Gold Award Take Action project has to last forever?  Does this mean a girl is responsible for maintaining or supporting her project for years after receiving her recognition?  Thankfully the answer is a resounding “NO!” to both of those questions. 

The sustainability information shared with Girl Scout volunteers at the Gold Award Advisor training is that all Take Action Projects need to include provisions to ensure sustainability.  Girls must make arrangements to ensure that the project creates lasting change and is NOT a one-time event.  In other words, gone are the days of running a one-day event to create awareness of Social Problem X and calling it a Gold Award project; that is a community service project.  Adding the sustainability piece now elevates the one-day event to a Gold Award Take Action project.  That sounds a bit daunting, so what does this requirement look like?

Let’s start with what it isn’t.  It isn’t creating a “How To” manual and leaving it with the agency in hopes that someone will pick up the book and continue on with what you started.  Nor is it as simple as posting a video of your project on YouTube.  But, these are both good starts to sustaining your project.

Girls can still run a one-day event and create the “How To” manual for their project; why should anyone who follows have to re-invent the same thing?  But to meet the sustainability requirement, the girls will need to train others or find a group willing to commit to using and maybe even updating the manual and continuing the project in the future.

Technically, posting a video could be an enduring legacy of your project but if no one goes to view it, it isn’t really serving the sustainability purpose.  The best way to utilize posted videos is to create a method to direct people to your video.  If the agency you are working with has pamphlets or informational pieces, find out about including a link to your video in these materials.  Ask if they can add your link to their website.

Once you have someone committed to continue the project or agreed to share the link, you have met the sustainability requirement.  But what if they don’t follow through?  Don’t panic – you are not responsible for the actions or, more accurately, the inactions of others.  However, choosing the right group of people to continue your work is the key.  You want people who feel the same as you do about the project and what you are trying to accomplish and people with the passion to see that it continues.  This will make all the difference in the world and in your project’s ability to endure.

Thank you Barb!