North State Girl Scout Gold

Just about everyone is familiar with the Girl Scout program. Girls work together in troops to earn badges and have enriching experiences. But did you know that Girl Scouts can work to earn a Gold Award, equivalent to the Scouts of America Eagle Award?

Making a Difference in the World

To earn the Gold Award, girls use everything they’ve learned as a Girl Scout to help address an issue in their community and make a lasting change in their world. Girl Scouts in ninth through twelfth grades who want to earn the Gold Award build a team of trusted adults, community leaders and peers who will support them through challenges and cheer on their successes each step of the way. Before earning a Gold Award, Girl Scouts must already have completed the Silver Award, a Senior/Ambassador Leadership Award, or a Senior/Ambassador Journey, awards that take up to 70 hours of service to complete. Gold Awards require at least 80 additional hours to complete.

The Journey to a Gold Award

Girls are encouraged to find an issue in their community or the world that they care about, learn everything they can about that issue through research and trusted sources and form a team by identifying experts and people in their community who could help them. Then, most importantly, each girl must think about the root cause of an issue and plan how she could tackle it. Her plan must be sustainable beyond the initial project. It must carry on after she has done her part and earned the Gold Award – the highest award in Girl Scouts.

After completing her plan, achieving the goals of the plan and earning the Gold Award, she reflects on the change she’s created in her community and the world, shares her story and inspires others to make a difference, too.

Earning the Gold Award is a life-changing journey. Two Shasta County members of the Northern California Girl Scouts have recently earned the Gold Award and are eager to share their experience of their remarkable journey.

Red Bluff Gold Awardee Chloe

Chole says she started Girl Scouts in kindergarten. “If you were to ask me then why I joined I might’ve said that I wanted to do crafts after school, sell cookies or even because I liked the uniform. So, the real question is not why I chose to be a Girl Scout, but rather why I continued to be a Girl Scout up to my senior year of high school.”

It was not because of the cookies, crafts or even the uniform. “It was because of the community that is Girl Scouts,” she says. “Girl Scout meetings were always a place I could be myself and still be supported unconditionally.”

Chloe was a junior in high school when she learned that her county has hundreds of teens who do not have a place to call their home. “How could you focus on school if you don’t know what you’re going to do about dinner afterward?” Chloe says. “When it came time to think about my Gold Award project, I knew I wanted to help these teens. I wanted to not only provide support, but also to break the vicious cycle that is homelessness.”

She partnered with the New Hope Teen Center to add an element of cooking by providing recipes, kitchen supplies and ingredients. Chloe reasoned that by encouraging this vulnerable population to cook healthy meals for themselves, they can be fed and learn a method of self-care. “Learning to take good care of oneself is essential to good mental health, which is essential to combat homelessness,” Chloe says.

Chloe is now 19 and attends UC Irvine.

Redding Gold Awardee Madeleine Baird

Madeleine chose to be a Girl Scout in kindergarten because one of her best friends introduced her to Girl Scouts and it sounded fun. “I continued to choose to be a Girl Scout every year until I was 18 because I saw the opportunities for growth and experience that this program offered me,” she says.

Madeleine’s Gold Award addresses the lack of accessibility to backpacking in her local Girl Scout community. “When my troop bridged to Juniors, we decided we wanted to level up our camping trips and discovered backpacking as an option,” she says. “We then learned that being able to backpack as a troop came with more hurdles than we imagined.”

Understanding the gear and how to properly use it was just the beginning of her project. Finding gear and paying for it as well as finding places nearby to backpack were additional challenges. She found Girl Scout families often did not own backpacking equipment and equipment was expensive to rent. “We had no idea where to backpack locally and council doesn’t offer training in our area.”

As part of Madeleine’s Gold Award work, she ran an educational event for local Girl Scouts where she explained where and how to backpack. She also reached out to Girl Scout troops to teach them pack packing skills.

Madeleine raised funds for backpacking equipment, including packs, mess kits, tents, etc., for any Girl Scout member of the Girl Scouts Northern California to use. She organized it and prepared it for easy access in the Redding Girl Scout offices.

Through Madeleine’s efforts, local Girl Scouts are able to take advantage of the beautiful backpacking trails throughout the North State region, experience the outdoors in ways they could not before, gain valuable skills and experience and enjoy a marvelous way to get exercise and stay fit.