Why Gold Award Girl Scouts are the Gold Standard in Leadership
What is one common thread that today’s leaders, including 53 percent of business owners and over half of the women in Congress, attribute to their success? Membership in Girl Scouts. And what was the first award earned by most of these women? The Girl Scout Gold Award.
In Girl Scouts’ own words:
Gold Award Girl Scouts are rock stars, role models, and real-life heroes. How do they do it? By using everything they’ve learned as a Girl Scout to help fix a problem in their community or make a lasting change in their world…There’s no other program like it.
And the numbers bear it out:
Être, a girls’ mentorship platform that highlights rising change makers, eagerly awaits each year’s class of Gold Award honorees and 2021 was no exception. Over 3,500 teens were awarded the highest Girl Scouts’ achievement last year, devoting over 350,000 hours of their time amid a pandemic to the issues about which they cared most deeply. Excited to learn more, Être girls interviewed two recent honorees and asked them to share their projects. Below is an edited version of that interview.
Sophia M. (17 and hailing from the Orange County, CA Council) created the Healing Through the Indigenous Art of Storytelling series to create art from ancestral stories. Seeking to make a lasting impression, continue the tradition of storytelling and honor her culture, Sophia created this project in the face of a community suffering the deep loss of Indigenous populations.
Ê: We are in awe of your project! What do you want other girls to know about being brave enough to share their stories and the overall importance of cultural storytelling?
SM: Representation matters. The mainstream narrative in America is missing the Indigenous experience; it is missing the first people’s stories and the wisdom embedded within them. Authentic storytelling means something to those who are watching you. I am Cahuilla. The lifeblood of my culture has been oral storytelling passed through generations. The timelessness and universality of our stories is how I remain connected to my heritage. Many of my ancestors are gone now, but they leave something with me: as long as I don’t abandon the stories, I can find the essence of my Indigenous relatives. They are the lifeblood of the stories I tell, dance, and write. It is my responsibility to receive, preserve, and promote Indigenous stories because without them the backbone of Indigneous culture ceases to exist.
Ê: We read that you were taught that “stories are medicine, culture is strength and women are leaders.” Who are some of the leaders that you look up to, and what is one of the impactful stories that they share with you?
SM: I look up to my mother. My mother is Anishinaabe, which translated means to live in kindness and goodness. My mother teaches me our tribe’s stories, and in turn the stories teach me to live in a way worthy of this world.
My mother told me the story of Skywoman, which is a story that has traveled through the generations. When Skywoman descended from the stars and breathed life into the soil, she brought with her a circle of giving — Skywoman taught the Anishinabe that affection bridges generations. Skywoman unveiled ceremonies containing medicine of gifting, gratitude and the promise of continuation.
In the second beginning there was a great flood. The world was covered in water. There were only animals; no people. Skywoman came down to Earth from the Skyworld. She needed land and there was mud at the bottom of the ocean.
One by one the strongest among the animals dove for the bottom of the ocean, but none were successful. None until Muskrat, the weakest among them. Muskrat dove for the depths of the ocean and after some time his body emerged from the inky water and lay still, but in his hands clenched a piece of Earth. Muskrat gave his life so that Women could live. Skywoman took the mud from Muskrat and smeared it across the turtles’ back to make the land. Then, she began to dance, slowly at first but then she was twirling, leaping, and spinning without abandon. The land grew and grew as she danced in thanksgiving for Muskrat, until she made Turtle Island.
I know why Skywoman danced into the land to make it grow: her gratitude. Skywoman’s story is an important one because it makes us remember the gift of the Earth, and the gratitude we as a people share. It connects my community.
Community connection, it turns out, was a theme threaded through other Gold Award projects during COVID. Izzy C. (17, from the New Mexico Trails Council) sought to support the family reunification efforts of Crossroads for Women, a local organization empowering women emerging from incarceration. Given the pandemic, Izzy found an even greater need to reconnect women and their children, so she dove in. Helping twenty women record personalized voice messages to their children in heart-shaped voice recorders, Izzy inserted the recorders into stuffed teddy bears that could be cuddled by children in their mothers’ absence.
Ê: We love the idea of reuniting incarcerated moms with their kids through voice messages — what inspired you to get involved with this project and how did the pandemic create a specific need for this?
IC: My inspiration for my Gold Award Project is based on my love for Crossroads for Women, a non-profit organization that provides comprehensive, integrated services to empower women emerging from incarceration to achieve safe, healthy and fulfilling lives in the community for themselves and their children.
I have been volunteering with Crossroads for Women since I was a Brownie. The clients of Crossroads experienced a great deal of obstacles during the pandemic, like so many of us, and expressed heartbreak over not being able to be with their kids, grandkids, or nieces and nephews.
I wanted to create an impactful project to closely connect the families of Crossroads through a parent reunification project.
My Gold Award Project focused on holiday care packages for these children, primarily teddy bears with voice recordings of their moms, grandmothers, and aunts so that their children could feel close to them. The women of Crossroads recorded messages of love, hope and caring to their children and grandchildren at a time where family reunification has been especially difficult.
Ê: How does mentorship play a role in Crossroads for Women, and what impressed you most about the women you have met?
IC: Mentorship plays an important role in our communities and building future leaders. Throughout Crossroads and my Gold Award project, I have had the benefit of strong mentors who motivate me to make the lives of our community members better.
Dalilah Naranjo, my mentor at Crossroads, has instilled in me the importance of giving back to our community and has demonstrated that leadership, determination and using your own voice can make all the difference.
I am most impressed by the women of Crossroads who raise each other up and the focus on building important life skills that will allow these women to reintegrate into their communities after incarceration.
Being around strong women leaders meant the world to me throughout the Gold Award journey. Despite the challenges, I learned how to persevere to be able to bring my Gold Award project to life because I knew these families were counting on me. My favorite part was being able to bring joy and hope to the families of Crossroads.
Hope and joy.
Community connection.
Mentorship moments.
These are the things that inspired two outstanding 2021 Gold Award honorees and changed countless lives in the process. Être girls were grateful to hear and share these stories, and are keeping their eyes squarely on girls like Sophia and Izzy. Because year after year, Girl Scouts have proven one thing: leadership has a common thread…and it often comes in gold.
