What did you do for your Gold Award Project?
For my Gold Award project, I first implemented a self care club at my high school to healthily address rising levels of stress amongst my peer group. Because the end of the year was cut short, the club was not able to fulfill all of its original goals, so I adjusted my self care club to a project that I titled, “Processing a Pandemic.” I took the information I learned about mindfulness and personal care and shifted it to a lens of societal care, which drove me to lead intentional Zoom conversations with high school seniors about processing the period of COVID-19 and what it means to grow up during this time.
How did you measure the impact of your Gold Award project made on your target audience?
For my self care club, I gave club members a pretest that measured their awareness of self care, their understanding of mindfulness and their calmness level before the club, and then, I had them take a post test with the same questions in order to track their growth. For my Processing a Pandemic project, I had participants of the conversation take a survey detailing what they learned and their takeaways from the calls.
How is your project sustainable? How will your project continue to impact after your involvement?
With both of my projects, I created and dispersed written final products that detail the key learning that was accomplished through my projects. For my self care club, I created a PDF with self care tips that will be used by my greater community. For my Processing a Pandemic project, I created an outline to the Zoom calls that will be used as a future lesson plan for different organizations, and I published a piece called “Pandemic Wisdom: Five Lessons Learned From High School Seniors.”
What is your project’s global and/or national connection?
I was able to include greater connections through dispersing my written pieces through the national Girl Scout community. Additionally, a component of my self care club was a social media presence that gained a national following.
What did you learn about yourself?
I learned so much about myself from this experience. Most importantly, I learned how to be honest with myself about how to persevere when things did not go as expected due to Coronavirus. Further, I was able to adopt many leadership traits like distributing responsibilities and asking for help.
How will earning your Gold Award impact you in the future?
I plan on using my Gold Award experience as a reference for creating a project that addresses an issue I’m passionate about and seeing it through. I will use these skills to become a social innovator in the future. Also, I intend to put my Gold Award on my resume to help with my post-college job search!
Why do you feel the Gold Award was an important part of your Girl Scout experience?
I have been a Girl Scout since kindergarten, so earning the Gold Award was a lovely culmination of years of experience that felt as though they were training me and leading me to pursue a big project such as this. Also, I was able to use my connections from my Girl Scout troop to further my project, showing how important and useful Girl Scouts has been in forming lasting friendships!
How did earning your Gold Award help you become a G.I.R.L. (go-getter, innovator, risk-taker, leader)?
I think my Gold Award helped me become an innovator. When COVID interrupted my original plans, it was a wonderful opportunity to go back and get creative and figure out a good way to move forward in new circumstances. I think innovating with projects like this is an important sign of flexibility and adaptability that ultimately lead to success.
**IMPORTANT NOTE: This blog represents only a small fraction of the hard work, dedication, and requirements that go into earning a Girl Scout Gold Award. It is simply a brief summary, which is meant to inspire Girl Scouts to Go Gold in the future. For more information on earning your Gold Award, please email highestawards@gscolorado.org.