Bronze into Gold Take Action

Did you see this in the GSUSA blog on September 29^th? 

“Girl Scouts’ palm oil use is very small, but our voice is big,” says Amanda Hamaker, GSUSA’s Manager of Product Sales. “Palm oil is an important product to the world’s food supply, so we believe promoting sustainable manufacturing principles is the most responsible approach for Girl Scouts.”

This action follows a five-year campaign by two teenage Girl Scouts from Michigan to make Girl Scout cookies rainforest-safe. The girls, Madison Vorva, 16, and Rhiannon Tomtishen, 15, learned as part of their Girl Scout Bronze award project that the habitat of the orangutan is threatened by deforestation caused by palm oil production.

“Madison and Rhiannon have done exactly what Girl Scouts teaches girls: find a cause you care about, connect with others, and take action to change the world,” says Hamaker. “They are shining examples of leadership in persuading a 99-year-old American icon to take on a serious global issue.”

WOW!  They learned about the issue as Juniors as they worked on their Bronze award, and then kept at it until the change was made!  This is truly a Gold Award caliber project, especially if they had some other pieces that the article didn’t talk about.

Who was their team?  If they were pointing out such a BIG issue to such a BIG organization, they would have needed scientific experts on their team.  Perhaps they involved an Eco-Club at their school and garnered school district support? 

How did they lead?  Did they identify the issue, then map out one plan to make the change?  Probably not!  The girls probably had stops and starts, revisiting of the plan, connecting with more partners to strengthen their request.  This could include Congressional members and lobbying groups or other National Eco organizations.

Did they educate others? Sure seems like GSUSA heard them.

Did they have a measurable outcome?  YES!  Watch for the changes on the cookie boxes.

Did they address global concerns?  Oh my, but YES!

Theses girls have truly discovered, connected and have taken action to make the world a better place for EVERYONE. Kudos to them! Can hardly wait to see what they’ll do for the Gold….

You just never know....

I posted this week about the great Silver Award Training we had on Saturday, and I mentioned that one of the interests was FASHION.  And the result, after conversations was that maybe that interest topic didn't have a fit for a Silver or Gold Award Project.

Well, I was WRONG! 

I just had a meeting with an good friend, Amy Larson (a GS alum), who is now Director of Development for Working Wardrobes. I went over to see the facility and hear about the new programs that they are offering.  For those of you not familiar with Working Wardrobes, it's a multi faceted non profit whose mission is: "(to) empower(s) men, women and young adults in life crises to confidently enter the workforce with career development and wardrobe services."

When Jerri Rosen first started the program, it was all about a collection of clothes from friends to donate to those in need of professional, interviewing clothing. That nugget of an idea has morphed into 9 full time staff people and 3000 volunteers every year providing not only personal shopping and clothing, but resume building classes, personal care classes, computer access, skill building and more! 

So, my question to Marlo Kirkham, manager, Community Resources (and a GS alum) was, "how can girls in Orange County partner with Working Wardrobes to create a Silver or Gold Award Project with girl leadership to make a difference in the community?"

Just from brainstorming with Amy and Marlo, we came up with some ideas. 

Start a high school club - advocate for helping this community, put on clothing drives, raise awareness, have a fashion show, visit a shelter, adopt high schools and provide prom dresses.

Work with emancipated minors to help build their skills in order to get a job and/or get more education, dress for interviews and the work world, learn office etiquette, find services that can help on an ongoing basis.

Resale Boutique - create a marketing plan and community awareness days, staff those days with volunteers to help serve the men and women who come in.  Solicti donations of appropriate apparel.

Work with the Cinderella Guild and take unsuitable/old fashioned prom gowns and re-make them for girls to wear now.

Create a blog about fashion and what is appropriate to wear when.  Determine how this germ of an idea could grow and become a Silver or Gold Award Project.

The lessons learned?  Never say never!  We adults need to use our resources wisely to reach out to our friends and colleagues as potential partners for our girls' projects. We can present the opportunity, and the girl can use her skills to investigate it and determine whether there's a fit for her.

If you think Working Wardrobes could be of interest to your girls, please ask them to contact Marlo Kirkham 714-210-2460, 3030 Pullman St. Suite A, Costa Mesa 92626

Setting Goals and Measuring

“Setting goals is great, but without a way to measure progress, goals become meaningless.”

Jeff Haden, writing at BNET’s Owners Manual blog

He’s right!  Not only do our girls need to make a plan and set goals for the Gold Award Project, they also need to find a way to measure their success.  And sometimes, it’s going to be tough! 

I spoke with one girl during an interview, and she said that SHE couldn’t measure it herself, BUT the M.D. who was supervising the project COULD!  And she would share the data with the Gold Award girl, who could then work to either change her program OR keep it the same.  With that kind of feedback, the girl would be able to tell whether her goal was being met, or not.

Working with a domestic violence shelter, as several of our Gold Award girls do, it’s really hard to measure the impact their work will have.  Due to state laws, no one EXCEPT those who have completed a 40 hour training, may work with the residents of the programs.  So how to measure impact?

Shannon said that her Gold Award Project will be as measurable as it can be!  She will start a DV Club on campus, bring in speakers, participate in fair booths handing out information.  She said that she’d be able to count the increasing number of students who participate, and how many flyers they hand out.  Will she be able to quantifiably say how many students she helped?  Not really, but at least she can count how many people she touched with information. And her hope is that those she touches will also touch others in the future.

Both girls see the goal, and have clearly set out plans to achieve that goal. Both have taken the measuring step into account, and both will use that information to continue moving their projects forward.  They, and the Gold Award Committee, will be able to see that they have achieved their approved goals.

Gold Award Project defined

From the GSUSA Blog: “Jacqueline is recycling wheelchairs, walkers, canes and crutches which will be donated to United Cerebral Palsy Association of Nassau County, St. Anne’s Church and Met Council of The Bronx. Her goal is to help alleviate the burden of purchasing these items for people in need. She was inspired by her mother who was forced to use a walker when she broke her ankle. Jacqueline was 11 at the time and wondered how people who didn’t have insurance could have access to this equipment.”

From reading that paragraph, I’d say it was a very nice collection/service project, but hardly a Gold Award Project!  But as we all know, a newspaper doesn’t necessarily get all the details into its article, so I have to hope that Jacqueline really DID have a fully thought out Gold Award Project.

Watching her Mom use a walker definitely made an impression on Jacqueline.  But what root issue did just collecting wheel chairs address?  I’m hoping that her advisor challenged her to investigate the current health care system to figure out what agencies exist to provide those items to those in need. Using the community mapping tool would have given her great insight into her own community.  And wouldn’t it have been great if she identified part of her issue as helping the underserved by connecting them to agencies.  Or created an outreach with UCP or other agencies to get the word out into the community that this resource is available.

And how could she have used her leadership, beyond asking for donations?  How could she educate others?  Create a sustainable plan to ensure that donations would keep coming in?  Beyond helping the few people with her donations, how could she make a lasting difference in her community?  What would challenge her to think bigger and better?  To go beyond her comfort zone, and engage more with others in a leadership capacity?

I hope that her advisor/troop leader asked these questions, and really made Jacqueline think about what she was doing.  I truly hope that the Gold Award Committee who interviewed her and approved her Gold Award Project made sure that these pieces were included in her proposal.

And I hope Jacqueline celebrated the completion of her very successful project!

Brand Ambassador

I was reading the New York Times the other day, and there was an article about the cosmetic company Lancome, and those who represent their brand.  Actually, they said, “…make way for the “brand ambassador”.  Over the last few years, this term, "conjuring up a Girl Scout sash and a certain Euro flair, has become a retail buzzword.”

Who knew?  Our Ambassador Girl Scouts are “brand ambassadors” for Girl Scouting, and on a NATIONAL level, have become a buzzword.

Pretty nice!  The article goes on to say, “they (Lancome Ambassadors) are to bridge the gap between their loyal customers and the celebrities that appear in their ads.”   Well, we aren’t quite at that level of celebrity, but isn’t this what we ask our Ambassadors to do?  To learn how to connect with their past, and to bridge to the future?  The Journey books for Ambassadors really have the girls identifying issues and taking action in their communities.

Just as a Gold Award Project does!  (You knew I’d get that in here, somehow!!!)  These 11^th and 12^th grade girls are up to their eyeballs with school, sports, drama, clubs and Girl Scouts, yet they choose to take on the challenge of a Gold Award Project.  They make the time, identify their issue and with our guidance, create and execute a worthy Gold Award Project.  They are truly the Ambassadors for our program.

As they apply for colleges, that little box that gets checked has HUGE meaning to the Admissions Office. It says that this young woman has completed the hardest award that Girl Scouting has to offer. She’s a better person.  A person concerned about her community, and she is ready for the next big challenge in her life. College!

Now what celebrity ambassador can say THAT!

Peter Drucker knows all

“Peter Drucker once said that the biggest curse a company can have is twenty years of success. It's true. Managers of successful firms tend to become complacent and even arrogant, assuming that past performance will continue....”

I read this quote in the HuffPost, and it struck me. Here we are with Girl Scouts:  turning 100 next year.  We’ve had national level challenges over the years, and we have not remained complacent, as we have reinvented all or part of ourselves over the years.  This last transformation being the Girl Scout Leadership Experience that we are in the midst of now.

Change is hard!  And I recall the first training I went to in GSLE:  even the trainers said it was horrible!!!!  It was a new language with new expectations that were waaaay different from my remembrances of being a girl in my Scout troops.  And sure enough, there was a part of me that said, well, it was good for me, and I turned out okay, so it should be good enough for all these girls, now, too.  (Yes, I know better!)

And the Gold Award Program is changing for the better!  While we still have girls working on the old Go For It! Gold requirements, by far, we are seeing more girls getting ready for the Journey Gold Path.  And it’s very exciting to see!

Yes, this transition has it’s bumpy parts, and yes, we leaders/advisors/

guides are sometimes waaay slower to change than the girls. But change we must to avoid the curse of stagnancy and complacency!  Truly, we are working on a local level to help move the GS movement forward on a national level.

And that’s a pretty humble way to go.

Quality - Raising the Bar

“The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.“

            - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a self-acknowledged fan of Dr. King, and I really like this quote as it may relate to the Gold and Silver Award Take Action Projects.  At Training, you've heard Karin, Lesley and me talk about how GSUSA is "raising the bar" on the standards for these two Awards.  Each award is supposed to be the hardest thing the girl will do at her level.

We advisors/project advisors/trainers need to help the girls look at the issue they want to address, and to critically think about what the need is in our community.  We need to help them identify a true need and create a plan to address that need.  This needs to be more than a collection project or something simple.  It needs to be bigger and more encompassing.

The quality of the work, the time the girl puts in and the leadership skills she uses and develops during the process are really critical here. This is a girl led process where the burden is directly on her shoulders!  We need to encourage her to find the Take Action Project that is meaningful, has quality and is within her scope to achieve.  It should  be difficult, and it should be a challenge!

For the Silver Award, this could be a single girl, or a small group of two or three girls who have come together around the same issue.  For the Gold, it's one girl alone.  You, her advisor, are there to support, cheerlead, provide resources and help her raise the bar and create a quality Take Action Project.  And NOT let her take the easy way out!

And when that bar is raised, good things happen: there is some longevity, but not necessarily something with a timeline attached to it!  Both the Gold and Silver Awards ask that the projects be sustainable.  There's no time attached to that, but it should certainly be beyond the immediate future.  At the Silver level, the girls also need to talk about and understand that global implications of their issue and their project.  At the Gold level, there might even be a way to provide for the project to global.  Or continue the talk about global implications, and talk about "what if" and other scenarios.

Dr. King believed that everyone has a voice, and that everyone can make a difference in the world. So do I. And so do your girls, I bet.

Moving from Silver to Gold

I had a Cadette Essentials Leadership Training a while ago, and it was a really great, small group!  Really motivated current Junior leaders who were looking forward to bridging their girls to Cadettes.   And we had two leaders who were brand new to Scouting!  They had a troop of 14 girls who were also brand new to Girl Scouting AND Cadettes.  WOW!

This was the first time I’d really had enough time in the training to properly introduce the Silver Award to a group of Junior leaders.  It went well, but it also led to discussion about the Gold!  The leaders spoke about how the girls saw the Gold as a real goal to achieve.  Part of my job that night was to talk about the new Gold requirements, and how the Journey path could be used to achieve the steps to get ready for the Gold.

We talked about the difference between Service Projects and Take Action Projects. Between the Take Action projects of the Journeys and the Take Action projects of the Gold.  And we talked about how important it is to hold the girls to the high standards of both awards.  There were questions about sustainability and global reach that are just the starting points for these leaders to begin guiding their girls.  These leaders took it seriously, and I could see that I had given them something new to think about,

It felt good to begin the Journey to the Gold with these new Cadette leaders.  And it makes me even more hopeful that once the transition from Old to New gold Requirements is complete, we will have girls coming up the ladder with great Take Action experience prior to their Gold Award Project.  And the leaders will have had success with the experience as well.

I expect some great Gold Award projects in the future!

Great Gold Award Project

As an interviewer for the Gold Award applicants, I am in awe of these girls!  Most have been in Girl Scouting over 10 years, and they just love it!  Most have a very clear understanding of their projects. Their enthusiam and excitement just leak out of them!  They just make me proud!!!

And then, there I am, a cheerleader for most, and the wet blanket for some. I'm the one who gets to ask, "what are you doing besides collecting supplies for the homeless shelter?"  I ask "what service projects have you done in the past?"  And then I get to ask, "How is their project going to make a bigger difference?"  How are they going to reach outside their comfort zone and be a leader?  And I get to ask the best question of all that I got from Lisa Hinshaw, "what's the hardest part going to be?"

One Gold girl had a passion for increasing literacy in the local elementary school. Her Silver Award Project had been to create and put on a play addressing this concern. Kayla had continued to work at the school after her Silver was completed, reading to the kids at story hour, volunteering her time.  It was a natural step for her to choose literacy at that school for her Gold.

Her root issue was literacy, recognizing that kids without English speaking parents at home were less likely to read English well, and learn to LOVE to read.  Kayla worked with the librarian and piggy-backed her gold project onto the library's Open House night.  She created 8 booths at her Literacy Fair, and she staffed them with volunteers form her high school, who did it for the service hours!  Her younger sister, a couple former troop girls and gal-pals helped as well.  Kayla organized the event, got together with the start up team to leader them in creating all the pieces, gathered materials and put on a fabulous fair!  Plus, she and her volunteers put on her Silver Award play again.  She had those 60 little kids sitting on the floor, completely enthralled. Plus, they had take away pieces on reading form the fair to use in the future.

But she wasn't done yet!  She completed an interactive computer program that the kids can use at the library at any time!  A great sustainable piece that makes a difference.  Truly, Kayla identified her issue, used her leadership skills, engaged volunteers from outside her troop, provided a huge benefit for a group of kids, and figured out a way for her work to benefit even more kids in the future.  a GREAT Gold Award Project finished just in time to list on her college applications this fall.  I am so proud of her!

(See the link to her video and some photos on the Great Gold tab.)