It's All About the Quality

“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.

Quote for the Day

I have a friend who sends me a quote every day in my in-box. Many of them resonate in some way with Girl Scouts and what we do as leaders.  As we move forward with this blog, you’ll see more quotes, and I hope you’ll share yours too.

Quote for the day:

“People never change.

They just become more of

who they really are.”

I liked this one for Cadettes.  These middle school years the girls are becoming more of who they will be.  They’re not set. Change and growth are possible and encouraged.

Perhaps they’re taking the Amuse Journey, where they explore the maze and navigate the twists and turns on their Journey.  It’s a great way for them to see how they value friendships, how they see others and how they view challenging behavior in themselves and others.  Working through these issues is going to help them define who they will be, and we all hope that they will become leaders in their own lives who learn to Discover, Connect and Take Action.

They’re still girls!  And while they already have a personality, they are still putting together the whole person they will become. 

And I think about my Mom.  She’s 82 this year, a former Girl Scout leader to me and both my sisters, and at the other end of the spectrum.  Truly, she’s still the same nice woman she was in my youth.  She just forgets more....