Work Together

“People who work together will win,
whether it be against
complex football defenses,
or the problems of modern society.”
     - Vince Lombardi, coach, Green Bay Packers



One Gold Award Take Action Project at a time! Yes, that's how we're going to win:  working together!  And as in football, there is one leader, and s/he has responsibility for the team to achieve the goals set forward.  Okay, that's it on the football analogies! 

Our girls need to lead their team to success!  That's why it's one girl, one Take Action Project. There needs to be one girl who has a clear vision of the problem and the plan to fix it. And she needs to be able to communicate it to others. Get them to catch the passion and all work together to succeed.

The girls need to think big!  And then whittle down the idea to something doable. Something meaningful.  Something they have real passion and concerns for.  Sometimes, in our Gold Award Interviews, we see girls with tons of passion, but no focus on an issue.  These are the girls that we coach, give ideas to, and then send back to focus their proposals.  We know the girl has passion when we get the revision back the same week!

And we hope that the girl who waits months to re-submit her proposal can re-ignite her passion and address the issue.  It seems that most can!  They have just had to take the time to get a focus and create a team to help.

(As I write this post, it's the day before the Super Bowl.   Football sure seems to be on everyone's mind, in one way or another. Me, I'm going to go talk about the Gold with the girls at the Mission Sisterhood Series, and then go shopping. No lines! Go team!)

Thoughtful, committed citizens....

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 
           Margaret Mead, American Culture Anthropologist

I don't know that I had ever seen this quote before, but I'm liking it for our Gold Award girls today.  

Aren't we asking that our girls who are going for the Gold use a thoughtful approach to the Gold Award Take Action Projects? We're asking them to identify a community issue. To do the research and figure out what the need is. Then to identify the root cause and commit to making a change.  With passion!

This is not a halfway measure.  Not milquetoast.  And certainly not easy!  But our girls can do it.  We may need to prod them a bit, ask them to reach, get outside their comfort zone and certainly to try hard.  And for that, they will have success in changing their part of the world.

One high school club or event or project at a time.  They will make a measurable and sustainable change that will make difference in the world.  And that's huge!  

Garlands for the Gold!

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands."

--Anne Sophie Swetchine,

Russian mystic and salon owner

I'd never heard of this woman, but I liked the image her quote brought to mind. I like the idea that our Gold girls are gathering ideas, these kernels of possilbilities, as they move through their daily lives.  And as they gather these ideas, they are thinking about which to select: the prettiest, the most unusual, the most interesting flowers to weave together.

Their Gold Award Project is truly a garland.  It reflects who they are, and how they think about the world around them.  It also shows how they took potentially disparate ideas and wove them into a Take Action Project.

In my mind, I see the garland as a May Day Crown - loosely woven together, pretty, not heavy, but with wonderful thought and heart put into its creation.  There's room to add more petals and flowers, and there's opportunity to shed some too.

We're asking the girls to reach high and come up with something wonderful!  As advisors, we are also here to nurture, to water and feed the growth of the ideas, to encourage re-invention and imagination.

These Seniors/Ambassadors can do it!  And we can help guide.  What a rich task of weaving that can become, as well.

Observation and Discovery

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."

Marilyn vos Savant,
American columnist

I pretty much always read this author's column in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section on Sundays.  I'm hoping that Marilyn is a real person, and that the "Letters to the Savant" are real too!  (If not, please don't burst my bubble of belief!)  Sometimes she is figuring out the answers to riddles and trick questions, but then I read a quote like this, and I remember why I like her column all over again!  She thinks!

The Girl Scout Leadership Experience (GSLE) is all about acquiring knowledge:  that's where the badge work comes in. And it's all about leadership:  that's where the Journeys come in.  As our girls work through both badges and Journeys, they're getting ready for something bigger and better.

That would be the Gold Award Project!  This is where we truly want the girls to use their skills and leadership to make the world a better place.  And the first thing we ask them to do is to observe.  To DISCOVER what needs there are in the community that need addressing?  To discover who needs help?  Who already serves this population?  What agency is looking for help? etc.

And then we ask her to acquire the knowledge:  to CONNECT to the issue and audience she wishes to reach.  To connect to the issue, be it homeless puppies, homeless people, bike riders, joggers or whomever!  The girl needs to dive deep and come up with some answers! 

Then she gathers her team and TAKES ACTION to make a sustainable difference in the community.  Not a service project, merely making a difference for a day, but to make a difference in the long term.  It needs to be measurable and sustainable.

Discover, Connect and Take Action. That's what GSLE all about!

Take Courage!

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."     

         --John Quincy Adams,
           Sixth U.S. President

We want our girls to lead with courage, confidence and character to make the world a better place!  And I think JQA had it right:  courage can be contagious.  And courage with a stick-to-itiveness is hard to beat!

How can our girls gain the courage to create a stupendous Gold Award Take Action Project?  How can they learn to lead?

How can they self esteem and self-confidence to choose an issue and make it their own?

The Girl Scout Leadership Experience (GSLE) provides the opportunity for the girls to gain these great skills in the Journeys.  Throughout all the Journeys, at each level, the girls are asked to lead their own experience at their age level.  So, as they progress up that Ladder of Leadership, they gain new skills and refresh learned ones.  It's not as though they are all of a sudden given the Gold Award Take Action Project out of the blue!  The girls have had the opportunity to practice, to get ready, by completing their Bronze and Silver Take Action Projects and/or by completing Journeys and badges.

After years of Scouting, our girls are ready to take on the challenge of the Gold!  With our bolstering, support and cheerleading, they are ready to gather up their courage and make a change in their community.  We encourage all of you to encourage THEM to lead with courage and to persevere to achieve their goals. Courage and certainty are contagious, and our girls can call on these attributes as they use their leadership to affect change.

I"ve said it before, and I'll probably say it again:  our girls CAN do it!

Starting from the Beginning

"The distance is nothing;
it's only the first step that is difficult."
         - Marquise du Deffand, (1697 - 1780) 
           French hostess and patron of the arts

And for our girls, sometimes it's that first step that is the most difficult!  As one troop leader shared, "I wanted to light a fire under her, to make a decision on what to do, then go DO it!"  Another shared that her daughter had soooo many good ideas and pieces of ideas, that she just felt overwhelmed and dispirited. 


What can we do to get the girl started?  Besides the proverbial lighting of the fire? Waving a magic wand?   Sorry, no easy answer here, though wand waving is quite in vogue, now.


We truly want the Gold Award Project to be girl driven, and we want her to put her passion for one idea or one issue into play.  But we project advisors, parents and troop advisors also need to provide the prod or nudge to move our girls forward.  

Maybe it's time to switch off?  If you've been the prodder, maybe hand her off to your co-leader? or ask the right parent to step up and work with one/all the girls on their Gold Award Projects.  Sometimes, hearing it from a different person can make all the difference.  Or have her stop by our quarterly Sunday drop-in sessions at council.  She can bring her ideas and talk them through with a member of the Gold Award Interviewers. Maybe hearing something from one of us would be helpful?

Or maybe ask the girl to provide an itinerary for a field trip?  Set up appointments at different interesting (to her) locations, and have the girl see first hand what she could do and/or who she might work with.  Not only could this be great for the girl, but an eye opener for the venue/staff she meets with.  Our girls are asking to do something bigger and more meaningful than a mere collection project.  She is looking to TAKE ACTION to make a change in her community.


Then help her to process all that info!  Perhaps a SWOT analysis would help?  Or perhaps she'll have an "ah-ha" moment and really focus down to what she wants to do.  


We can all hope!  And encourage!  And support!! Any other ideas?  Please post!

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!!!

Give it your all!

I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end."
--Larry Bird
American basketball player 

Great attitude!  And I bet, at least for him, he gave over 100% on a regular basis.  I remember watching him play, and he was all elbows and determination!!!  


This is the kind of effort that we want our Gold Award girls to display, isn't it?  Not a half-way or lackadaisical effort, but one that they give 100% to.  Not every minute of every day, but when it's time to work on the Gold, they focus and give it their all.

All that passion and interest in their project should be the driver for doing a good job.  And it should also be contagious.  I bet Larry Bird's was!  He was all about team play, and our girls should be too. We ask them to identify an issue and then gather a team of friends, students, club members and/or troop members to lead.  Our Gold girl is the leader of that team, and she is setting the example, putting out the goal, getting agreement and then working with the team to achieve it.

All that determination and effort DO pay off in a complete, well done Gold Award Project.  Even if there's no 3-second rule involved....

Articulate the Issue

"Don’t dance around problems -- articulate the issues as precisely as possible."
--Victor Lipman, writing at Forbes

This is incredibly difficult for many adults, and most of our Gold Award girls!  I think that for some girls, especially the 9th graders, critical thinking is not perceived as an everyday need.  So, maybe they haven't had much practice exercising that part of their brain. Or perhaps they've been spoon-fed information for such a long time, that the girl just waits for someone to give her the answer, instead of doing the work  herself, to research and synthesize and come up with an answer.

We need to let the girl figure it out!  We are there to encourage, support, provide resources and be a sounding board for the Gold Award girls, NOT the solver of their dilemmas!  And this takes time!  Using the GSLE model, we should be turning over the girl experience to the girl, in age appropriate ways. So that by the time she's a Senior/Ambassador, she is leading her own GS experience.

Think of what valuable skills she's learning over her GS time.  How to dig deep, how to suss out the problem and then figure out how to solve it.  And it starts small:  designing a menu for an overnight.  Then planning a Day Camp.  Going on a destination. Completing a Silver Award Take Action project.  


Then, when she's ready to start her Gold Award, she has the tools, the skills, to articulate the issue and understand the root cause so that she can Take Action in a meaningful way.  I encourage all of us to support the girl in her efforts. They will make us proud!

Make it Meaningful

"Put your heart, mind and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."

--Swami Sivananda Saraswati, Indian Spiritual Teacher

We had a really fun Gold Award Training the other night!  Small group of committed (or ought to be committed, LOL!) parents and advisors.  All were there to learn how they can best help their girls earn the Gold Award.  We trainers hit hard on the ideas of taking action to make a difference in the community, raising the bar in terms of expectations, and helping the girl identify her issue and root cause.

We talked about having the girl identify what she's passionate about.  Because we know, without that passion, it will be difficult for the girl to move forward and complete her Take Action Project. She needs to truly have the motivation to take on the hardest challenge she'll have in her Girl Scout career!  Having only lukewarm interest will not cut it!

We want our girls to put their heart, mind and soul into their project!  This is the passion that needs to be channeled into a Take Action Project.  Why?  Partly so they want to do it, and partly because, it's contagious.  Girls who lead with passion and heartfelt belief attract others, and bring others along as the girl leads the work to be done.  She is perceived as a winner, a leader with charisma who is going to achieve a great goal.  Now who wouldn't want to be on her team???

Our girls really need to know success.  It's more than crossing a finish line in a race, because that's very individual. This is about achieving a far-reaching goal with a team of supporters with whom she can celebrate success.  The girl has the knowledge that she made a difference in the world, and that she is a leader.  That she took on a challenge, overcame obstacles and had success!

Be sure she has a chance to reflect on what she's accomplished and also to celebrate! 

"Discontent is the source of all trouble..."

 



“Discontent is the source of all trouble,
but also of all progress,
in individuals and nations.”
               - Berthold Auerbach, 19th century Poet and Author

Of course I think that this quote is relate-able to the Gold Award!  Aren't we asking the girls to identify issues in their communities that speak to them?  And couldn't one of the reasons that an issue might appeal to the girl be because she is not happy with how some people are treated?  

I think this may be true for many of the social services.  The girls talk about what's wrong in the world:  too much hunger, too many homeless, too many unclaimed pets, etc.  So isn't it the girl's discontent with the status quo that motivates her to Take Action?

And by investigating the issue, discovering the root cause, "the source of all trouble", she is able to make a meaningful contribution to her community.  She takes was is uncomfortable, and seeks to fix it.  That's progress!  And it's even a more REAL progress when she makes her work sustainable.  She is making progress that continues, past her involvement with the project.

I like that:  "the source of all trouble" is the root cause or issue that we're asking the girl to identify and apply herself to resolving.  A pretty big undertaking, but our girls are up to it!  We just need to support her efforts.

Get into the Game

 “Everything is created twice –
first mentally, then physically.”
                    - Greg Anderson

(I don't know who Greg Anderson is:  the Google search gave me a whole list of guys with the same name, but I think this quote is from the author who wrote about beating and living with cancer.)  It resonated with me about our Gold Award girls.

These are high schoolers, and they can be the most creative and enthusiastic of girls, but they can also be the most easily sidetracked and derailed!  In order to go for the Gold, we are asking them to make the commitment, and then we're asking them to really get their head into it to do the work.

It's tough work, identifying a need in the community and then discovering a root cause. NOT starting with the project first!  And we need to support the girl's efforts to do the brain work ahead of time.  We need them to be able to visualize the work that needs to be done, and to work it through first in their minds, then on paper, so that they can see how it might all play out.

And once they've done the initial thinking process, they need to re-create it in the form of an application to council.  So in a sense, they're completing two processes. The physical work doesn't come until after the interview and approval by the committee.  (That's where the fun begins! Action and seeing positive change looks and feels great!)

I wonder how many girls get stymied by the start up work?  How many just aren't willing to make the effort?  or don't have good tools to use?  

How many need additional encouragement and support?  Probably many!  And where are they going to get that?  From parents, troop advisors, friends and project advisors, for sure!  We adults need to let the girl do the mental work, while being sure that we support their efforts and offer connections that she might want to use.

Get Carried Away!

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid."
--Lady Bird Johnson,
former U.S. first lady

This continues to speak to the passion that we are asking our Gold Award girls to have for their issue.  

We want the girls to get all wrapped up in their Take Action Project!

We want the girl to reach high, lose her fear, and make the world a better place!

We want to support the girl, give her attagirls and some resources, but let her do the work!

We want to let her take some safe chances!

We want her passion to be contagious as she gathers her team!

And we want her to succeed! Think how much easier it is to succeed when the girl is passionate about her issue and project. And how painful it is when she is not.  We want her excitement to carry her forward, even during the tough parts.

We don't want much, now do we??!!!

Coming up with Plan B

"To have a good idea, have a lot of them."  

Thomas Edison

American Inventor

This felt like a good quote this week!  One of the things we ask our Gold Award girls to do, is to identify an issue, brainstorm a possible solution, gather a team and put the plan into play.

But what happens when that great idea has no traction?  No organization wants to partner?  The solution to the need, while a good idea, just doesn't fit? What does the girl do then?

This happened with one of our girls last summer, working on the Girltopia Take Action Project.  Her issue was about domestic violence, and she had an idea about a project that she would like to do for a local shelter. She thought she had some initial buy-in from the organization, so she started her plan, gathered her team and did the needed steps to start the work.

Turns out, the organization didn't want/need what she wanted to do!  It was truly frustrating, and while not a waste of time, it certainly didn't yield the result the girl was hoping for.  She was soooo disappointed, especially because she only had the one plan to pursue.  She had put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak, and she lost them all!

Thomas Edison would probably have suggested that once the issue was identified, it would have been a good idea to ALSO identify several possible solutions or plans for how to address it.  So that if the first doesn't work, there's some groundwork to fall back on.  Plan B can become Plan A. 

Is this a good idea for our Gold Award girls?  Is it good tool to use as we work with these girls:  to try and get them to think of several possible ways to address the issue?  Not trying to make more work for anyone here, that's for sure. But, perhaps it's a good idea at the beginning of the process.  It might lead to a deeper and more complete understanding of the complexity of some issues.

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.