earn my gold award

Right now i can’t start it, but i have the prerequisits and i need to finish two more IPA badges. I’m halfway through Car Sense which took forever, and also work on career and leadership hours

This passed summer, my entire G.S. troop earned our Gold Award. There are 8 (yes, I said 8!!!) girls in the Senior troop I’m in, and we completed a collaberative project. Between the 8 of us, we totally revamped the county home, Eve. It takes in abused and impoverished women and children, and beileve me, it needed some TLC!! My personal job was fixing the play ground in the back. I fixed the swings, put down new gravel, and put in a new flower bed. We’ll be having our ceremony in May!!!

I did mine a few years ago with a friend and it was so worth it. We collected prom dresses and gave them out to girls in the area who couldn’t afford one. It has a definite sense of accomplishment. I commend anyone who has completed their gold award. It is not as well known as the eagle for boy scouts, but just as much of a big deal!

completeing this opened so many doors in my life! it will remain on your manuscript forever and is def worth doing

I’m doing my project with my best friend. It’s called the Rockafe, and we are having local high school rock bands play a benefit concert to raise food for the Hunger Task Force. It’s frickin awesome… check it out www.myspace.com/rockafe

The Gold Award is the highest award a girl can earn in Girl Scouting in the US. Earning the Gold demonstrates a girl’s committment not only to Girl Scouting but to her community and to herself. In total, earning the Gold Award requires probably at least 100 hours of service time. There are preliminary steps, including earning a career exploration patch, a leadership award (itself requiring about 25-30 leadership/service hours), and a self-exploration “Challenge” award, three badges related to your project (each of which require a community service). The main part of earning the Gold award consists of a project a girl must plan and execute. The project has to be something that benefits the community, not just Girl Scouting, and must be led by the girl herself, though any number of people can help her. When I earned my Gold, the project itself had to be at least 8 hours; including the planning and preparation the entire project had to total at least 50 hours. The requirements have changed in the past couple years since I earned mine; I believe the total hour requirement is up to about 65.

I actually did two gold award project, the first dying a slow and painful death before I finally gave up on it and, with less than 4 months to go before the deadline when I graduated into adult Girl Scouting and was no longer eligable to earn my Gold, I changed my project and earned the Gold in record time for my council. The first project was a bit too complicated, hence why it didn’t end up working(my idea was to set up a Meals on Wheels-type program with library books for homebound senior citizens, but that turned out to be way too complicated). My second project, the one that actually earned me my Gold, was to accompany my council’s Outreach program to do crafts with the girls in underserved communities visited by Outreach (places like an impoverished housing complex, poorer neighborhoods and school districts, that sort of thing). I also assembled binders of craft instructions categorized by age-appropriateness to leave at my council’s various campsites and the council office. My favorite part of earning my Gold project was when I helped the girls at a church we went to make a quilt to donate to a women’s shelter. Each girl decorated a plain white fabric square, then I took all the squares and sewed them into a quilt. The girls voted on where they wanted to donate their quilt and we decided on a women’s shelter for domestic abuse victims. I think my mom still shows of pictures of the quilt being donated.

Earning my Gold is my proudest accomplishment. I’m not sure what I can do to top it. I think something like less than 1% of girls who join Scouting will earn their Gold, and the statistic of American women who are Gold Awardees (or Golden Eaglet or Curved Bar or First Class, the predecessors to the Gold Award) is some incredibly small number. That number truly represents the best in American women. All the women I’ve met who are Golds are just the most incredible people. Many of my close friends at college are Golds and most of my close friends from Scouting at home earned their Golds. My sister and her Scout troop are currently working on some of the preliminary requirements to earning their Golds. I can’t wait to go to her Gold Award ceremony when she earns hers.

I think this goal gets my award for MOST “worth doing” and MOST “willing to help”.

The gold award is the highest achievable rank in girl scouting. it consists of numberous merit badges as well as a self-organized voluteer project which must aid the communtiy and add up to a minimum of 50 hours of service. it is a huge acomplishment and is the equivalent an eagle scout in the boy scouts.