*placemats for the Special Childrens Center
*Collection of food for the SPCA shelter
*educational display on the Barn Owl (threatened here in NY)
* A Cadette Girl Scout troop planned a week-long literacy celebration at their local library. They arranged for local celebrities to host story
hours, held a panel discussion of teen books, and put on a play that
featured favorite book characters.
* A Cadette Girl Scout decided the camp library needed updating. She made a
list of books and games needed and asked each troop in her service unit to
contribute an item on her list. She then catalogued the items and devised a
checkout system.
* Six Cadette Girl Scouts coordinated an effort to help their local food
pantry restock its shelves after a community crisis. They designed posters
and flyers to promote the effort and got supermarkets and theaters to help
sponsor the "can-a-thon". The girls decorated "donation barrels" from the
local moving company and worked with the fire department to arrange local
food pick-ups.
* A Cadette Girl Scout troop wrote and put on a play about self-esteem for
girls in low-income housing areas.
* A Cadette Girl Scout campaigned to get a traffic light installed at a busy
intersection in her community. Her work entailed researching accidents,
gathering testimony from residents and police, circulating a petition, and
attending city council meetings.
* A Cadette did an orientation video for our camp geared to Daisy and Brownie
troops.
* A Cadette did a photo album so leaders could see which site they wanted to
request without having to hike around the campground.
* Two Cadettes joined forces to throw a spring party for a foster children's agency
which deals with special needs children and sibling groups.
* A Cadette’s Silver Project was a Science Fair for Juniors. The girls earned their
Science in Action badge and the related Contemporary Issues patch.
* A Cadette organized a book drive for a local library. The librarian was delighted
with the response.
* Two Cadettes worked with a Brownie Troop for several months to get them
ready for their first camping experience and then went camping with them.
* Another Cadette hosted a Brownie Play-Day. The Brownies earned two
Try-Its and learned lots of neat games.
The following is a list of Silver Award projects that have been successfully completed by
Cadette Girl Scouts in the Peacepipe Girl Scout Council.
1. Planning a day long or overnight event for younger Girl Scouts. Enlist the help of the
leaders to plan the schedule, activities, refreshments, and invitations. Contact community
resource people to help with the activities.
2. Serve as a program aide with younger Girl Scout troops. Assist the leader with singing,
games, and teaching crafts.
3. Present a demonstration at a community or county fair about something that you have
learned. Use charts, photos, or actual hands on experience.
4. Assist with a bible school or Sunday school class. Prepare lessons, crafts, and
participate in a program for parents.
5. Volunteer to help with activities at a nursing home. Coordinate crafts and games for
everyone.
6. Make or collect toys and games for a local hospital. Collect items for food and
clothing shelves in your community.
7. Plan and organize a babysitting clinic for younger children. Contact resource people
from the community to assist you.
**************
Past Silver Award projects from our neighborhood include:
Making Trees Out of Aluminum: starting an aluminum can recycling project and
using the profits to fund a tree-planting program at a local GS campsite
(The tree-planting program was already in existence; the girl did not plan
it.)
Tried-And-True Crafts for Brownies: making a reference book for troop
leaders of crafts that have actually been tried in a troop of Brownies,
including costs, time estimates, and comments like "First graders could not
tie these knots, but second and up could do it easily".
Pool Mural: Organizing a group of volunteers to paint cartoon characters on
the bottom of the toddler pool of our community pool
Adopt-A-Grandparent: a year-long project pairing Girl Scouts with residents
at our local senior center, including card and letter-writing, visiting,
Bingo parties, and holiday decorations -- among other things
Soccer Field Clean-up and Painting: organizing a group of Girl Scouts to
refurbish the local soccer field
Brownie Bridging: organizing a bridging workshop that bridged our Service
Unit Brownie troops (4 troops) to Juniors, culminating in a Bridging Picnic
Kids Carnival: Organizing a one-day children's carnival at our local pool,
including booths, games, etc.
Sherri's troop
**********
My daughter is planning the end of year Service Unit wide Bridging/Court of
Awards Ceremony for her Silver.
Two of my girls are doing two workshops on The World Association of Girl
Guiding/Girl Scouting.
Three others are building two book cases and collecting books to be donated
to a children's home.
Here's what my seven are doing or have done:
* "me and My Guy Night" spaghetti feed, games and dessert making contest -
BIG SUCCESS
* A thinking day for one group of brownies/juniors in an after school
council troop
* making place mats for meals on wheels
* teaching crafts and cooking to girls in church youth group
* talent show for kids at shrines hospital
* teddy bear picnic for brownies
* doing 3 try-its with large brownie troop
* Two of mine are doing a Sports Day for Brownies.
* Two are doing a Happy Hats Day.
* Two are doing a "Center" at day camp: Girl Scout Ways.
* Thinking Day event for all the girls in their school or community
* Disability Fair, hands on stations to see how it would be like to be
impaired
* Fun Day event- to see what Girl Scouting is all about, open to all girls
* Baby shower for the neighborhood pregnancy center for troubled teens
Kathy and Troop 870
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I have two daughters and I can share the Silver Award Projects that the
Girls in each of the troops did.
1) 5 girls organized a roller skating party for all the GS in our
association. And required that each girl bring a canned food for our local
food bank
2) Three girls made baby quilts and donated them to a local hospital that
deals with babies infected with the AIDS virus. They also invited troops
in the association to make quilts and displayed them at a "quilt show"
before they donated them to the hospital.
3) 7 girls organized and planned a 5th-6th-grade camporee. At the Cadette
level, adults were ultimately in charge but the girls decided which badge
to work on, organized the workshops and ran them and the campfires.
4) 3 girls built steps at the elementary school they had attended for
better access to the upper playing field.
5) One girl loves animals so she collected old blankets and towels to be
used in an animal rescue center.
6) Two girls organized a clothes drive, collected clothes from the school's
lost and found, washed and sorted them and donated them to a shelter.
Alyce Troop #1339
* I had one girl help start a babysitting service for our service team.
This was to help our leaders who had no sitter, and could not come to
leader meetings. It was totally planned and carried out by two Cadettes.
* Another project was landscaping for a habitat house. A group of Cadettes
planned and carried out a landscaping at a habitat house, They were able to
get the plants donated.
Patricia Junior/ Cadette/ Senior Leader
Check the GSUSA WebPages. They list some Silver and Gold projects in the
"Just for Girls" section. Almost any service project in the IPP's could
make a Silver Award project. Here are some others I know about:
* Preparing and taking a Junior troop on its first campout
* An "Australia Day" for Daisy, Brownie and Junior based on one girl's Wider Op
* A project to make sleeping bags for homeless
* A school uniform drive (here middle schoolers wear uniforms--khaki or navy bottoms and white shirts with collars) asking for donations of the required pieces to benefit needy kids
* A project to restock a local food pantry; organizing a service unit event
*Establishing a perennial garden at an elderly day care center
* A "parent's night out"at a local church with the donations going to a homeless shelter (donations were cash or items needed at the shelter like razors, socks, underwear, etc); shoe boxes stuff with school supplies to send to Romania (or wherever the need is at the moment)
* Book collection to restock a school library damaged in a flood
* Preparing a resource book for Girl Scout troops (and other groups) on how
to work with the elderly--activity suggestions and places to go.
Deborah - Senior Troop Advisor/Leader, Master Trainer, IOT
Silver Project done by my troop of then, 4 girls
Collected over 800 books from donations and built a library for a "safe house" project in a disadvantaged neighborhood where kids can go after school. They built a cabinet (the kind that you buy and put together), Organized the books via Dewey decimal, decorated the room and devised a checkout system. More than enough work for 4 girls and very community minded.
Mamabeck
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The following are the completed, ongoing and proposed Silver Award projects from our troop.
Brownie Ideas Galore! (Fall, 1997) (1 girl)
Surveyed past and present Brownies and Brownie leaders in order to collect their advice to new Brownie leaders. She collected information by telephone, over the Internet, and in face-to-face discussions. Then Compiled the results into a booklet, Brownie Ideas Galore!, which she hopes
will be a helpful resource for new Brownie leaders.
Brownie Games Festival (January, 1998) (1 girl) organized, prepared materials and supervised a games festival for over 100 Brownies and their leaders. She organized and trained 6th grade Juniors and other Cadettes to run the festival's stations. She also arranged for the location used for the festival, as well as successfully solicited refreshment donations.
Westward Ho! (May, 1998) (3 girls) They organized, prepared materials and ran the Westward Ho! station for the town Brownie Encampment. They recruited and supervised
Cadette helpers to help run the station.
Instant Program Workshop (May, 1998) (2 girls) They developed a workshop of games, songs and crafts for parents volunteers helping troop leaders. They also developed a packet of resource materials for the workshop participants. They ran 2 sessions for 25+ parent volunteers and Brownie leaders at the town Brownie Encampment.
Learning About Ponies (August, 1998) (1 girl) She organized and ran a museum special about horse care for our local Children's Discovery Museum. She prepared and gathered the materials, Made the arrangements for the ponies which were part of the exhibit, recruited members of a local 4-H horse club to serve as explainers, and recruited the adult supervision
needed to make this a safe event for the over 100 children and parents who attended.
Sangam World Center resource (August, 1998) (1 girl) She visited Sangam World Center and interviewed staff and her own relatives who are involved in Indian Guiding. She compiled the information and her photographs into a resource to be used by anyone interested in learning more about Sangam and guiding in India. Copies of this resource will be placed in the council lending library and the museum.
Reenactment encampment director (October, 1998) (1 girl) She organized an encampment for her reenactment group. The encampment was originally scheduled for June, 1998 but was cancelled because of the weather. She then organized, using the resources of her reenactment group, a second event at a local historic site offering activities and information related
to eighteenth century education.
Resurfacing a town softball field (Summer, 1999) (1 girl) (ongoing) She is making arrangements with the appropriate town officials and organizing work parties to get a much used softball field resurfaced.
Collecting items for refugee relief kits for the United Methodist Committee on Relief. (ongoing) (1 girl) She is running a drive to collect the requested items and will organize a group to assemble the kits.
Organizing our SU Cookie Sale Kickoff (proposed project) (1 girl)
Organizing a SU rocket launch event (proposed project) (1 girl)
Organizing a quilt service project for a local shelter in her school in such a way that this project will be ongoing and run by students in future years (proposed project) (1 girl)
Linda Senior/Cadette Troop 2001
For their Silver, my five Cadettes wrote and filmed a camping techniques training video. In preparation, they had produced a flag ceremony training video the year before. The camping techniques video took a weekend of camping to produce and covered basic safety, trail blazing, fire building, outdoor cooking and cleanup.
Fern
Last spring our troop made quilts for ABC Quilts. We created four crib quilts.
The girls chose the fabrics, cut the blocks, arranged the blocks and sewed the pieced tops together. The girls also chose the backing colors for 2 quilts & my coleader & I chose the other 2. My coleader assembled the quilts together (top, batting, bottom) & the girls did the quilting, either by hand stitching or tying off. We completed these quilts over a 3-month period. We had one sewing machine and block arranging day during spring
vacation, but the rest (cutting blocks, quilting & tying off) was done sporadically at our weekly meetings as 'filler' around other meeting activities. Some girls enjoyed spending a lot of time on the quilts, others enjoyed trying it but didn't care to do much more than that.
Some of the more recent projects in my SU:
Yearlong visits to nursing home: programs, visiting residents, special events/parties
Girl Scout Week event for Brownies (day-long)
Career Day for 7th & 8th graders at HS (40 occupations were represented;
each student was assigned to visit 3 & ask questions)
Day-long event for 1st grade Brownies (to help transition into 2nd grade Br; both 1st grade troops had good years, but were facing some changes: new leaders, 1 leader had lost 3 year old in April, etc.)
Oral Histories for Archives: 2 girls doing taped interviews of area
long-time GS adults
Nancy