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From Girl to Girl Scout: A Reflection My Higher Awards Journey
By Eisha Alam, Girl Scout Ambassador
July 26, 2023
What are the Higher Awards?
The Higher Awards are composed of the Bronze Award, the Silver Award, and the Gold Award. The Higher Awards are service awards that entail a girl making a sustainable impact to solve a root cause in the world. Having been a Girl Scout for 10 years, choosing my favorite part is hard, but it would have to be my Higher Awards. I genuinely hope that every Girl Scout has a chance to earn her Higher Awards and gain benefits as I did.
My Higher Award Projects
Bronze Award
I completed my Bronze Award with the other Junior Girl Scouts in my Troop. We held a toy drive for Muslim kids overseas in Palestine and Syria who didn’t have anything to celebrate Eid ul Fitr, a religious holiday that Muslims celebrate after a month of fasting in Ramadan. We put boxes in our local masjid and community centers to gather toys. After four weeks, we gathered all the toys and set up an assembly line to wrap each gift and decorate. Finally, we handed them to an organization that distributed them to kids overseas.
Silver Award
My Silver Award was an independent project as I completed it during the COVID-19 pandemic. I had just discovered geocaching – a treasure hunt-like activity that takes place worldwide, where boxes of trinkets are placed in parks and trails, and people go out and locate themes using coordinates posted on geocaching.com. I wanted to create safe activities during the pandemic where families could spend time together and outdoors. To meet this need, I placed six geocaches in different parks around Dallas and put fun little trinkets like a mini compass, stickers, and a Girl Scout note. I created profiles for my six caches, and 300+ people visited the Geocaches I placed!
Gold Award
I am in the process of completing my Gold Award: building a STEM Center at Stinson Elementary. This project manifests my love for STEM and my desire to share it with other kids who might also find their passion in STEM. This STEM Center will have fun STEM books, trivia, and robotics kits for kids to explore their interests. The goal is to present STEM topics in a different light than just through school subjects. I will fill this need by engaging more kids in fun STEM projects and providing fun opportunities for kids who want to pursue careers in STEM..
Skills I Learned from My Projects
1. Courage, Confidence, and Character
What makes the awards different is the independent development. Confidence can come through teamwork, but it can also be developed when talking to professionals and managing a project – exactly what the higher awards entail. Working independently on my Silver Award, I had to talk to park managers and respect the rules they had in place. But once I had completed my project, it gave me the courage to organize events independently as I knew the issues I would face and do something even bigger for my Gold Award!
2. Time Management
Unlike school or a job, where you have specific timings and tasks, the Higher Awards necessitate initiative. I learned from my Silver and Bronze Awards that finding time outside of my busy high school schedule could be a struggle, so I planned to complete everything for my Gold Award over the summer. My Gold Award required greater time management skills, and I finally got a planner to track all my activities! I’m telling you from personal experience: these awards know how to do their job!
3. Become a Diamond
As any amazing thing has many benefits, obvious and not, the Higher Awards have so many side benefits. Girl Scouts are already known to be awesome, and having the Bronze, Silver, and especially Gold Award on your resume will express so many positive characteristics about a girl that may be why you get selected for a certain program. Furthermore, only 6% of Girl Scouts get the Gold Award: that statistic can make a girl stand out and shine in college admissions or a job application. You will shine like a diamond with the Gold Award on your resume!
4. Long-Term Investment
The most valuable outcome of the Higher Awards is the focus on service. The Higher Awards helped me understand what it means to serve my community. Sometimes, it’s not about what you want to do; it’s about what the community needs. By completing my Higher Awards, I made a long-term investment in my personality and future.
Happy Girl Scouting! :)
