EP 63 Girl Scout Adult Recognition Awards

Full transcription available at http://heartsofgoldpodcast.com/

Sharing about the different adult recognitions offered by Girl Scouts.

Receiving the Thanks Badge II this week was a huge honor for me. However, I realized that so many people do not understand the Girl Scout Adult Recognitions that are available. AS a member of out council's Adult Recognition Committee, the biggest effort we make is educating about the awards and encouraging others to nominate volunteers. Our council has worked to make the nomination process as simple as possible and we were able to grow the number of nominations received, but I know other councils receive so many nominations that the bulk of the work is reviewing and nominations to select those to recognize each year.

The GSUSA awards include:

Volunteer of Excellence: any volunteer working with girls

Appreciation Pin: Volunteer contributing to a geographic area - this may mean a community or service unit, more than a single troop

Honor Pin: Volunteer contributing to two or more geographic areas, similar to the appreciation pin, but serving a larger area

Thanks Badge: Volunteer contributing to the entire council or movement with Thanks Badge II for someone that has received the Thanks Badge and continues to expand their work

President's Award: This award is for a group. At our council, this is often given to a group that creates a new girl experience.

GSUSA Adult Award Description and Criteria (girlscoutshs.org)

Councils often have special recognitions. Make sure to check out your council's website to find out what their process is and what other recognitions may be available.

I encourage everyone to consider nominating someone that has done something that has caught your attention. When nominating, my strongest suggestion is to make sure to share a personal story and share how the actions are above and beyond. Help the reviewers get to know the nominee's personality and the special work they do which deserves the recognition. All volunteers are important and likely deserve recognition. Encourage others, especially the girls, to nominate those you identify too. Multiple stories help strengthen the nomination and help your volunteer rise to the top of the process. The nomination process for the girls could be wrapped into a badge work or journey related to story telling or writing.

For my nomination, this show, along with the speaking engagements I have been doing to promote the Gold Award were some of the basis for my nomination. Feedback from the girls on the impact the show had on them supported the nomination.

Here is a link to a document on how to write a strong nomination: Adult Award Nomination and Endorsement Letter Examples V2.pdf (gsofsi.org)

Ideas for nominations:

Instead of 'she is a great cookie coordinator', share a story of how her cookie organizational skills helped girls step beyond their goals or what unique spin they put on cookie sales. For their cookie booth, they had the girls create a recipe cards using Girl Scout cookies the girls then gave to people as they walked into the grocery store. The sales at the cookie booth were double from the year before at the same location.

Instead of "they put on a great day camp", have the girls share how the day camp theme impacted them to achieve something else on a related topic; or how they got six businesses in town to participate in the day camp; or how they expanded the day camp from a community event to a regional event. This example is a great opportunity to use numbers in you story. Last year this day camp had 30 girls attend, by meeting with six local businesses to gain additional support and getting the day camp flyers out two months earlier than normal and including all the schools in the county, this year's day camp served 120 girls.

Don't forget the behind the scenes volunteers. Those that support your troop, service unit, or take action projects. XYZ farm assisted with connecting us to different women in the farming industry to create an event where 8 different careers were represented and girls had the opportunity to tour the working farm. We were able to open the event up to the entire county and had 50 girls attend. Plans are already underway to expand next year and offer the event council wide.

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