Another Great Gold Award Project

 (From the GSUSA Blog January 15, 2013)

Miranda wanted to encourage and connect teens with service opportunities.  For her project, Miranda developed and implemented a comprehensive volunteer service program using social media and a Ning website to match service-based organizations with the 2,000 high school students who reside in the Northville school district.   Twelve communities/schools have requested a CIA (Community Impact Awards) implementation.  CIA has applied for a non-profit status.  Over 350 Northville high school students are already working on one or more awards, which translate to over 10,000 hours of community service.  Averages of 6.4 new members join each week.

Yes, this Gold Award Take Action Project is a good one! Miranda was recognized as a National Young Woman of Distinction by GSUSA for her work.  She saw a need and figured out a way to fill it.  And then made it possible for other schools to do the same.  What a great thing!  And the outcome was a total benefit to the community of students connecting to a non-profit and giving service hours. 

Miranda made it measurable and sustainable.  She also made it possible for the project to go global.  A perfect model for our girls to follow.  

Our girls can have the same success with their chosen issue, and create a Gold Award Take Action Project that makes a difference in the world, too.

What We Do for Others....

“Life's most persistent and
urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?’”
            - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I saw this quote on Monday, and I liked it!  I think that there is a connection to Scouting here.  Our girls are great at providing service to others.  From the beginning, they are Scouting for Food, singing in Sr. Centers, creating placemats for luncheons, performing flag ceremonies and so much more!  They are the champs at doing something for others.

The Gold Award Take Action Project is the penultimate "doing for others" because not only does it call for action (a service) but it also requires sustainability.   So, we are asking our Gold girls to do something for others: address an issue in their community, seek out its root cause, and then work with a team to address it.  PLUS, find another non-profit or other entity to take it over, and continue that good work for years to come.

THAT is Taking Action, and giving great service, not just for now, but forever.  (Okay, or for the foreseeable future!)  An awesome task, and one, I think, that Dr. King would embrace.  

Great Gold Award Projects

We're dipping into the GSUSA blog posts from January 15th again.  GSUSA has chosen their top 10 Young Women of Distinction Awardees, mostly based on the quality of their Gold Award Project.  (I'm assuming there are other considerations, too...)

Here's one from Mandy:

"Passionate about the health of the ocean and how youth education impacts global problems, Mandy designed an aquarium and a three-day curriculum that would expose 5thgrade students to ocean health and environmental threats to the ecosystem.  Carefully designed, the aquarium and curriculum serve together, providing basic information on an assortment of aquatic topics and linking the classroom to bodies of water all over the world.  Mandy is currently expanding the curriculum based on teacher request and continues to host lectures at the school.  She hopes to soon expand the program to include other schools and communities."

Lovin' it!  This girl found out how to connect her passion for ecology with a specific issue.  She identified the root cause and gathered her team, I'm assuming.  She worked with a school to provide a curriculum that can be used again, not only at one school, but at other schools in her district. GREAT sustainability!  And the global impact is easy to see.

This is a prime example of what we want to encourage our girls to do:  Discover, Connect and Take Action to make the world a better place!

What does a GREAT Gold Award TAP look like?

I get asked all the time, "What does a great Gold Award Project really look like?" The GSUSA blog (which I hope you all get!, but if you don't, sign up here <blogsubscription@girlscouts.org>)   
just published the names of the 2013 National Young Women of Distinction. They also published a paragraph about each girl and what she did.

Truly, these all sound like well deserving young women.  Here's the first one I liked:

Nationally, one in three women experiences relationship abuse, an issue Nicole wanted to address, particularly as it relates to middle and high school students. First, she ran a program in her local middle school educating them on dating abuse and violence in the media. Nicole was so impassioned that she then championed legislation that requires safe dating education be provided to middle and high school students as part of their health curriculum. After the law passed, she created a school club called MASK Theater, which takes the spirit of the new law and joins that with an innovative creative program for students in her HS.  Among other performances and events, MASK has created PSAs, an informational DVD for other schools and has even run a Girl Scout Workshop on healthy relationships and the media. 

We have a number of girls who are interested in Domestic Violence issues. Many have done volunteer work at Laura's House admin. office or for their events.  But due to California law, the girls are prohibited from working with the actual women and their children at the shelter.  So a common question is, "how can a Sr/A girl connect with the issue?"  

Nicole, above, found a way to do it!  And she figured out a way to reach a large number of people about the issue, measure success, and successfully hand it off to another entity to continue her good work. This is a ROCKSTAR formula for success!  I'm sure there was more to it, including budget, timelines, solicting help from advisors and adults, etc. than was talked about in the article.

How else could your girls connect to the issue of Domestic Violence and/or relationship abuse?  As high schoolers, what is age appropriate and can affect change in the local community? That's the discussion to have with your girls, as they run with the issue, and try to make a Take Action Plan.

Share the Load

“It's not the load that breaks you down,
it's the way you carry it.”                                        
       - Lou Holtz, ret.football coach

Yep, it's all about teamwork!  It's about working together and achieving a goal.

The Gold Award Take Action Project is all about one girl. She needs to find the issue she is passionate about and then identify the root cause.  Using all that passion and interest, she needs to partner with an agency and figure out how she can address the issue.  

And even before she is approved for her Project, she must consider who the team is that she will be assembling.  Who are the peers, friends and/or school club members she can gather to help her.  This is about sharing the load:  finding the right people to help her achieve the goal.

She can't do it alone!  It just doesn't work like that!  This is an opportunity for her to use her leadership and work with others.  She needs to learn that spreading the work load can yield remarkable results: more than with just her solo effort.  What a great thing to learn!  While it's still her overall responsibility, she will have a team of support.

It's exciting times for our girls!  And everytime I have a chance to talk with a prospective Gold girl, it is so much fun to see their excitement and interest. And very fun to encourage them to pull together a great team that will work, under her leadership, to make a difference in the world.  

Raise the Bar HIGH!

“High achievement always takes place
in the framework of high expectation.”
                      - Jack Kinder, motivational speaker

I like this quote for January!  We have a new year, new opportunities, new resolutions to make (and break!), a new outlook on the future.

As adult advisors, part of our job is to hold the girls to a high standard:  don't let them be slackers all the time, help get them excited about what they're doing, and let them know what the expectations are.  It segues really well into the high standard of the Gold Award Take Action Projects.  In training we say, the bar has been raised!  It's the Advisor's job to be sure that s/he understands this, and communicates it to the girls. 

No longer are Gold Award Projects "Birthday in a Box" or "Prom for Senior Citizens" or "Collect toys and food for Puppies"!  Now we are asking the girls to identify an issue, and then look at that issue's root cause.  From there, she can find an agency to partner with and build her team.

She needs to have the expectation that it's a process, that it's going to be time consuming and that she really needs to be passionate about what she's going to do.  That kind of passion and commitment is what's going to make it possible for her to achieve her goals.  

Please hold the girls to the higher standard and then celebrate their success when they complete their Take Action Projects.  You'll both be glad you did.

"Computers are useless.
They can only give you answers."
Pablo Picasso



He's got a point!  And when I first started interviewing Gold Award girls under the old requirements, I would often get a print-out of city or county stats.  This was in answer to the question, "what's in your community?" Well, I got an answer from the computer, but it didn't really address the question.

Now, in the new Take Action requirements, it's stated differently.  There's opportunities to do a mind-map of the community, showing the interlinking circles and how they touch/affect each other.  There's also an opportunity to "look at your community."  This goes waaay beyond computer generated answers of statistics.  

What the Gold is asking the girls to do is to dive deep and address the question.  Use their eyes and look at where they live, not at a computer screen.  See what is around them, and let them choose what issues mean something to them.  Perhaps it's the homeless issue.  Seeing real live people on the street, some with kids, some in wheelchairs can help our girls connect to the issue.  They are there to make a lasting change in a community. Those people are part of that community.

Computers can help with the research:  how many communities have the same need.  Or with getting details about service areas/boundaries.  But a computer is not likely to grab the heart of a girl, and create in her a desire to help someone else.

And we need our girls to connect to the issue in order to use their passion to complete the Gold Award Take Action Project.  It's a ton of work these girls are being asked to do, and they'll need determination, support from you(!) and support from their team to make it work.  Let the computer be a tool to use to advance a cause, as it will never be the piece that touches a girls' heart and gives her the gumption to make the world a better place.

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a safe and joyous 2013!

Ann