Think BIG!

I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos,it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift."

      --Septima Clark,

      American educator and civil rights activist

I don't remember where I found this quote, but I like the thought it expresses.  Especially as it relates to our Silver Award girls. 

In our Silver Award and Cadette Essentials Trainings, we talk about the Take Action Projects that the girls need to create.  And one thing that is a running theme throughout is the notion that the girls need to start with the issue before they choose a project!

The girl needs to look around in her community, be that school, church, sports clubs, city, county, whatever, and see what piques her interest. Where does she see chaos?  Or a need?  Or a lack of service?  And then she needs to dive deep and figure out what issue she wants to address.  What is the root cause of the issue, and how can she make a change.

And you project advisors/parents/troop advisors need to give her support. Ask the questions, don't take a quick, glib answer as the final say.  Your role is to encourage and support.  The more I hear, the more I learn that all girls are different in the support they need. But universally, those girls who are passionate about their issue, are the ones who are more motivated to do the work. 

Looking for chaos, or an opportunity to make a change, is difficult!  But our girls can do it, with our help and guidance.  They'll need a couple pushes in the right direction, I'm sure, but they can do this.    Have your girls look for the chaos as an opportunity. And let them see the success of a job well done.  
  

Pick an Issue for the Silver

"Dissatisfaction is a great starting point,
for it is right there that we have
the most power, strength, and energy
to push change through."
                                - David DeNotaris, motivational speaker

I'm thinking about our Silver Award Training tonight, and came across this quote in my inbox. (Thank you Rick Ruiz!)  And it seems a good one for the day.

We have a piece in the training about, "what's the issue?"  And we talk about how the girls need to look around themselves to see what's in their community.  Maybe another way to express that is to find where they are not comfortable? or where they aren't satisfied with the way things are going.  It's that dissatisfaction that could lead to investigating an issue and learning more about it.

As the quote says, identifying that "thing" that makes the girl uneasy, dissatisfied or plain angry is a GREAT starting point for coming up with a Silver Award Take Action Project.  Remember, 65% of this aged girl, nationally, is likely to speak up and just know that she is correct.  She holds strong values and opinions, and she doesn't mind sharing them.

That's a very powerful position to be in!  Our job as advisors is to guide the girl to harness all that certainty and power, identify what she wants to change, and then let her go do it!  If she has the passion for her issue, she will be more likely to succeed than if she is just going along with someone else's idea.

At training last week, we had a leader talk about how she thought three girls were going to do a group project...until she heard them talking about how diverse their interests really were. So now, she has three projects!  The first thing we all encouraged her to do was to GET HELP!  Enlist parents and other project advisors!  Spread the wealth around!

These girls can do it! We may have to nudge, okay nag, to get them started, but with their certainty and abilities, they are poised to do wonderful things!

Character Counts

“Character is what you are in the dark.” D. L. Moody

Evangelist and Publisher, 19th Century

Girl Scouting is all about "courage, confidence and character", and that's what we adults are hoping for our girls.  I think that one thing that unites us as adults, is that we only want the best for the girls we work with, whether that's a daughter, granddaughter, niece, troop member or stranger.  We want those girls to grow up strong, to make good decisions and to proudly go where no one has gone before.....  thank you, Captain Kirk.

When I teach the Cadette Essentials classes, one of the things we keep coming back to is that this is a leadership program.  And while it can mean that a future President of the United States is in one of our troops, it's more likely that a future married, mother of three with a part time job, two labs and a mini van is too!  Both will need to be leaders:  for the country and for their own lives. Both will need skills that they learn in Girl Scouts. And both will need the character to move forward.

We give girls a safe environment to practice their leadership skills, and to make safe mistakes while they're learning.  Girl Scouting also gives them the opportunity to practice their leadership as a patrol leader, treasurer, Junior Jam staff, destinations participant, Silver Award Awardee, and more.  In the process they develop that strength of character that fits into the young woman they will become.

Whether it's in nation-wide politics or home-based values and beliefs, we want our girls to succeed, and to be the same great girls at both the beginning and end of the day.

Use what you GOT!

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

--Theodore Roosevelt,

26th U.S. president

I like this, today!  We want our Silver Award girls to Take Action, using the tools they have gained through their Journeys, badgework, troops and all the levels. These are the tools that they need to use - what they have within.  Then the girls need to reach out to lead a team that brings event more support.

She needs to do this to the best of her ability.  This should be a stretch, not a walk in the park.  We're asking the girl to look within herself and use the tools to make a difference in her local community.

Not just collecting doggie blankets and neo-natal caps, but using the leadership skills that she has garnered in her GS tenure to make a measurable and sustainable difference. Now, does she need to ensure sustainability?  No, but she needs to be able to talk about how it could be sustainable.  What if her project was about the importance of spaying/neutering of all pets?  What if the information program she put together happened in ALL cities in Orange County?  California?  The U.S.?

Our girls are capable of more than service projects!  And the Take Action Projects that go with all three of the awards are meant to stretch the girl, and let her use what she has to make the world a better place.  We need to support these efforts, and push our girls, in the best possible way, of course, to achieve her goals.

Where she is.  Today.

Make a brand new ending

"Though no one can go back
and make a brand new start,
anyone can start from now
and make a brand new ending."
- Marcus Aurelius

I woke up this morning thinking about he Silver Award. (And gardening after the rain, but that's a different blog, somewhere.)  Then I saw this quote when I opened my emails.

We really are asking our Silver Award girls to make a brand new ending.  We're asking them to identify an issue that they care about in their community, and to do something about it!  

The identifying is a critical thinking step that is really important, and one that many of the girls haven't had the practice doing.  It's not just coming up with the solution, but diving in deeper, to look into the issue and find the root cause.  And as we all know, no one can go back and fix where something first went wrong, but our girls can start now, and figure out how to make a change.

They are not only using the three keys to Discover the issue, Connect with how they can Take Action to make the world a better place, but they are also working from within.  The girl has the opportunity to learn something about herself:  to discover what's important to her, and why she needs to connect and why she needs to make a brand new ending.

And along the way, she'll be using skills she's honed since Daisys: to be a girl leader, to learn what she's doing as she does it and to work cooperatively with others. As the Silver Award leader, she will certainly use her leadership skills to lead the group to complete the project.

...and make a brand new ending.  Hail Caesar!

Where a girl goes

“It's not where you came from
it's where you're going;
It's not what's on you
but what's in you;
it's not what you're driving
it's what drives you that's important!”

I received this quote from Rick Ruiz, who sends his whole serv-list a quote of the day.  I don't know who said it, but I liked the sense of it.  And of course, it applies to our Cadette girls!

These middle school years are a time for our girls to explore who they want to become.  A time to reinvent themselves and become the person they want to be.  They are going to see more of the world and other people, and their particular situations.  

This is a time when they may decide to become vegetarians or only eat cruelty-free meat as a way to address the issue they are passionate about - the ethical treatment of animals. Or they may connect to a news story about a family without resources to the internet or English education, and that could spark an interest in literacy across an economic/social divide.

And this is a time when this age girl is soooo sure about what she says, and expresses her opinions as facts.  It could be giving lipservice to what she hears at home, or it could be in response to new information she's learning at school.  

These girls are reaching out beyond themselves and their family, in the process of finding out who they are and where they want to go.  Isn't it great that they have Girl Scouting and the safe environment that Girl Scouting provides?  And as advisors, don't we hope that the girl will be able to channel this into a great Silver Award Project, so that she can truly make a difference in the world?

It's an exciting time!  Thank you for all you do to support them, even if they don't say it now, they will!

Take Action

"Never confuse movement with action."

Ernest Hemingway, American Author

I think ole' Ernie had it right!  We want our girls to learn how to Take Action.  We want them to learn how to find what needs fixing/help, and take the steps to make the change.

Just as we can postpone decisions or tasks by "looking busy", so can our girls.  And that's okay!  I hear leaders tell me on a regular basis that sometimes, all the girls want is busy-ness.  It's all about talking, nails and the Oscars.  It looks like they're taking some action, but really, it's just motion.

The Journeys are a good practice for learning how to Take Action. Each Journey has a Take Action Project, and each Journey asks the girl to do the planning and thinking ahead of time before the TAP.  What a great way to learn!  These projects can be on the Journey-lite side, and they can also be robust, on the pre-Silver side,  and make more of a difference.

Movement merely looks good.

Action makes a difference in the world.

"I am what I choose to become."

 “I am not what happened to me,
I am what I choose to become.”
                    – Carl Gustav Jung, Analytical Psychologist

And isn't this where our girls are now? These middle schoolers are learning who they are, changing who they are, reinventing themselves and making choices on who they want to become.  In a safe environment.  Within a great Girl Scout Leadership Essentials program!

This is the time for the girl to explore!  Take a Journey, or two.  Gain some skills working on the new badges in the Cadette Girl Guide.  Maybe take the PA training and learn how she can use her leadership skills to help younger girls. Or set her sights on CIT training in a couple years. Or plan to take a destinations adventure in the coming years.

This is the time to investigate the community and identify issues that she might want to choose for her Silver Award Take Action Project.  She may be gung-ho about it, with parents cringing in the wings, or she might be timid, and need the parents/advisors to bolster up her courage so that she can learn and grow.

The girl gets to choose!  She gets to re-invent herself, if that's what she wants.  If she's been with the same troop girls since Daisys, she may reach out to other Scouts in other troops, so that she is no longer known as the "barf-o-rina" girl who gave up lunch at a campout in front of everyone.  She may want to choose her new public profile. Or not.

Girl Scouts is great about giving choices, both to the girls, the parents and the advisors.  A difficult situation for some, but as we see more and more girls and adults embracing the new leadership model, we see a greater comfort level.  There is more to do, more ways to do it, and more encouragement along the way.

It's exciting to see what these girls are going to choose, to make the world a better place.

Be a Leader

 "A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves."

- Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady

(A good quote for President's Day, I thought!)

Isn't that something we all want?  To be inspired by a good leader?  To catch the charisma, the spirit of what motivates that individual to make her mark on the world?  To be confident that she knows what she wants? That it's a good thing?  And that we want to join her.

And how does that make each of us feel?  To follow a great leader who inspires us, causes us to rise up and take on the challenge?  To challenge us sufficiently that we want to grow and in doing so, gain confidence in ourselves and our own abilities?

Wouldn't that make us more confident to go out on our own, gather a team to lead, and share the journey with them?

I think so!  And I think that's what we're asking our middle schoolers to do. We want them to see good role models, to have a safe place to learn, to grow and to try on new roles.  Girl Scouts is a safe place for girls, and so it's also a place to have safe failures.  The girls have the opportunity to learn and grow in confidence.  And that confidence is going to be strengthened as they move towards their Silver Award.

Because in the Silver Award Take process, we're asking our girl to be a leader!  To inspire the team she's leading, and to work cooperatively to achieve the goal.  It doesn't happen overnight, darn it!  But as leaders/advisors, we have the opportunity to model good behavior and to inspire the girls to gain confidence in their abilities.  

Using the Journey books helps this process.  The girls can take leadership roles in their own Journey experience.  This gets them ready for their Award work.  It's a process, and it does work! Slowly....but still, it works!

Turning up the unexpected

"Things don't turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up."

James A. Garfield, 20th U.S. President

I liked this quote for today.  And of course it fits in with our Gold and Silver Award girls Take Action Projects...

Both Awards are focused on the girl identifying an issue and looking for the root cause.  And maybe, in the process of looking, the girls turn up something unexpected.  And maybe, it's a key need that is not being addressed in the community.  Perhaps, she's interested in helping the homeless, beyond a collection project.  And perhaps, in diving deep into the issue, she finds that there is less than adequate local help to meet the need in her area. 

The girl is taking the initiative and identifying the need. She then has the opportunity to create partnerships with existing agencies, start a new tutoring program for kids without homes, create and run an after school program throughout a school year or whatever project her investigation leads her to.  As we all know, there's not just one answer to a problem.  Our girls have the tools and character to Take Action to make change.

In their years of Scouting, they have learned to Discover and Connect. The Gold and Silver Award Projects are just bigger ways to Take Action.  Again, it's not about starting with the project, it's about identifying the issues and root causes to make a difference in the world. Their world.

And what's our role as parents, advisors, leaders, friends?  To support them in their efforts!  Not do it for them, but give them guidance, coach and support.  There may be tears and frustration, but the girl will learn, sometimes it takes to get to joyful success.  We're here to help, not do.

And we're here to make sure they celebrate their success.  Big time.

Be the Best

 The roots of true achievement
lie in the will to become
the best that you can become.
- Harold Taylor, Politician, Manitoba, Canada

I like teaching the Girl Scout Leadership Experience (GSLE) classes for council.  Because one of the things I get to talk about is having every girl be a leader in her own life.  We all want our girls to stand up on their own two feet and make healthy and informed decisions for themselves. To be their BEST!

And one way the GSLE program encourage them to develop leadership skills is by giving them different things to work at and goals to achieve. To start, the badges do that! They present the opportunity for the girl to achieve a goal and develop skills.  The Journey path gives them a menu of opportunity to use these skills as they move forward:  setting goals and selling cookies, planning camping trips, earning the LIA working with Brownies, etc.  Each piece of the Journey gives the girls the opportunity to achieve some success.

So, as they move through Cadettes, they are building their skills, experiencing new things, working together to achieve goals, and taking a Journey to use these developing leadership skills.  As the girls earn badges and complete tasks, we hope that they understand that these are the building blocks of who they are going to be!  And we hope that they understand and embrace the opportunity to do their best, and be the best they can be.

I think that's what Mr. Taylor is saying: achieve small things, build confidence, garner success and create the will within to always do your best. That way, no matter the task or obstacle, there's a will to achieve, and the knowledge that it can be done.  

Get Started

 “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”

Samuel Jackson, actor and activist

“That’s too hard!” 

“I can’t do it!”icon

“So-and-so said that’ll never work!”

“I don’t know anyone there!”

“It’s raining!”

Many middle school girls are a combination of knowing things with dead certainty, and finding excuses to not apply themselves and start a project.  Many times, road blocks will be thrown up to put off starting something.  And that often works!  The girl might never start. Someone might do it for her….I hope it’s not you!

I think Mr. Jackson has it right, even if the girl can’t figure it all out ahead of time, she still needs to work with what she knows to start.  This is a great age to try new things and attempt leadership/projects/badges that might seem challenging.  Girl Scouts provides a place for these girls to experience safe failures.

I first heard that term a while ago, and not in conjunction with Girl Scouts.  But I think it fits really well into how we provide a safe space for girls.  We give them the opportunity to lead, work well with others and learn cooperatively.  If the girl(s) fail, they have friends/troop members/GS community to console them, prop them up and encourage them to start again.  It’s about learning. And it’s about growing.  Safely.

It’s about starting, failing and starting over.  And it’s about our supporting their efforts, encouraging their beginnings and celebrating their successes.  It’s also about our guiding them through a process, acting as resources, and offering them the chance to succeed. 

These girls can do it!