Over the past year, 243 local Girl Scouts from eleven counties completed almost 13,000 hours of service through 115 Silver Award Projects. Those are some incredible numbers!
Projects ranged from hosting a gigantic career fair and helping recruit guide dog volunteers, to teaching girls about snap circuits and building a sustainable greenhouse entirely out of plastic bottles. How cool is that?
Here’s a snapshot of just ten of these great projects—get ideas, get inspired, or just get excited about the amazing girls who are making a difference in our community …
1. The Food Pantry Garden – Completed by Leanna H
Girl Scout Leanna took action to help end hunger. For her project, she partnered with The Holy Innocents Church Food Pantry that serves over 65 families every week, and over 100 families during the winter holidays. Her contribution? A sustainable food garden! Now, youth groups, local students and community members can manage and harvest the crops from Leanna’s garden to help those in need throughout the year.
2. Career Fair – Completed by Kaitlin R
Where do you want to go to college? What do you want to be when you grow up? Kaitlin wanted to help her classmates answer those questions and give them a chance to ask a couple questions themselves. She organized a gigantic career fair at her middle school—85 professionals turned up to give advice and 700 parents and students attended the event!
3. Clean Water and Salmon in the Puyallup River – Completed by Abigail A, Alyssa M, Stephanie B, Madison M
These four gals hosted a Brownie workshop to teach their sister Girl Scouts about clean water and healthy salmon habitat. To ensure their Silver Award project had an impact beyond the Girl Scout community, they took their advocacy even wider by making a sign to educate the general public and each spent twenty hours each cleaning up garbage along the Puyallup River.
4. My Little Library Bellevue – Completed by Anusha S, Malaya M, Kira L
Providing affordable and accessible books for children in their community was a driving force behind this Silver Award project. Girl Scouts Anusha, Malaya and Kira planned and built a little lending library where kids can pick up books and return them with ease … all at no cost.
5. Fair Housing Act – Completed by Kim B
The Fair Housing Act is meant to protect people from discrimination when they are renting or buying a place to live. Girl Scout Kim wanted to learn more, so she read, researched and spoke with a person with a disability who had gone through the process of securing housing. Kim became an advocate for fair housing practices and helped spread awareness about the resources available to those in need.
6. Awareness of Guide Dogs for the Blind – Completed by Melanie C
For her Silver Award project, Girl Scout Melanie set out to increase volunteer numbers for guide dogs for the blind. She found out that local clubs dedicated to the cause needed a lot of people to their support guide dogs: puppy sitters, volunteers, and people who could raise the dogs. Melanie created a reusable information board they use at events to get people informed and excited about pitching in to help!
7. STEM Snap Circuits for Kits – Competed by Emma E
After noticing that some schools in her community didn’t have many STEM activities, Emma decided to create a free after-school STEM class. With Emma’s help, the students learned snap circuits and how to create all kinds of toys—from radios and lights to flying saucers!
8. Shirts for Foster Girls – Completed by Ashleigh W, Mikayla H, Kimberly S
These three ladies partnered with Treehouse—an organization that provides foster kids with essential support—to make and distribute 50 trendy shirts, jeans and bracelets for foster girls entering high school. Knowing how difficult it can be to fit in, Ashleigh, Mikayla and Kimberly wanted to help their peers feel confident, fashionable and fierce!
9. Math Facts – Julia W, Amanda W, Margaret C, Sarah M
Hoping to encourage confidence and strength in math, Julia, Amanda, Margaret and Sarah worked one-on-one with students in a fourth-grade class at their school. They visited every Friday, bringing practice tests and fun games to build up math skills and grow self-esteem.
10. Environment-Friendly Greenhouse – Completed by Sam K and Sierra J
Over the course of a year, Girl Scouts Sam and Sierra collected more than 1,500 two-liter plastic water bottles from four local schools. Their goal? Build a greenhouse. Their greenhouse—which is entirely constructed from the bottles and stands at a local church—is now used to grow food. These gals really know the meaning of the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle”!
Congratulations to all the Girl Scouts who earned Highest Awards—Bronze, Silver or Gold—this year! You’re proof that Girl Scouts know how to take action to make the world a better place.
Feeling inspired? Start your Bronze, Silver or Gold Award project today.
Have you done an awesome project with Girl Scouts? Tell us in the comments!
14 Responses
I am an 02 with a cadette/senior troop in Springfield, PA. My daughter would like to tailor her silver award to bringing more information to local businesses and volunteers about service dogs. Specifically PTSD service dogs. Any guidelines you can share would be wonderful. Thank you.
Start with local animal shelters and local dog trainers they should point you in the right direction. What a great idea!
And a local Veterans Affairs medical center. Thwy give vets service dogs
Those r really cool ideas and I can never do something that awesome. For my silver award I am do a sports/fun day for brownies and juniors to introduce them to new sports to little kids, to be active and to exercise more. Every thing is ok besides the money part. We looked up that is says that the only way to make money is by cookie booths and to sell a lot of cookies. But that can’t be it. Do u have any ideas or suggestions. Please comment back. Thank You.
You can use your own money, but I would doubt you would want to do that. Another thing you could do is take supply donations. The only thing you can’t take is money.
Your troop must participate in Fall Product sales and Cookie sales in order to do other fund raising activities. You need to get permission from your Service Unit Managers and the fundraising must be a girl action event. So it can’t be a restaurant night event, but can be a car wash, badge workshop, craft sales, etc – anything that a girl can make or work. Good luck!
You should be able to raise funds by doing other things like car washes, garage sales, and holiday gift wrapping. You should always seek approval through your council. But as long as you are not receiving direct funds or taking a job that others would normally be paid for there several ways to earn money. Some service units have a list of go to ideas and places to earn money. Good luck on your project.
If your troop participates in the cookie and fall fundraiser, you should be able to fundraise outside of Girl Scouts. At least that is what I have learned through Girl Scouts.
Money making varies by Council. In our Coucil as long as you sell Fall Product (Nuts, Candies, & Magazines you can do find raising. Things that allowed are car washes, yardsales, spaghetti dinners, paint parties, cupcake wars. Things not allowed are Tupperware parties, Pampered Chef parties or any third party type selling where the Troop gets a portion of tge proceeds, raffles are not allowed, partnering with a local restaurant where the Troop gets a portion of the sales for an evening is not allowed. There should be a Money Making request form on your councilsvwebsitevthat you have to fill out and forward to your Service Unit Manager. Good Luck!
We hold chicken bbq’s to help raise money, You could also get a couple of flamingos and make a “you got flocked” sign people pay for you to do it other peoples lawns. If you google girl scout money earning activities you can find a list. Just make sure you fill out your extra money earning activity form from your council if you have it. You could also make a personal go fund me page then donate it to yourself for your project. Good luck!!
Those Silver Award projects are very inspiring and are great ways to help the community. For my Silver Award project I gathered recipes from around my community, and I compiled them to create a cookbook. I then spoke with a specialist to develop ways to alter and change the recipes to make them healthier. I admire and congratulate any Girl Scout who is working on or has achieved their Silver Award. No the project, any project can make a difference.
I am thinking about doing a career fair for my gold award. Would like to hear more about Kaitlin’s ideas and how she went about it. I’m from N.J. and parr of Girl Scouts of Central and Southern N.J.
What should I do for my sliver? I am on the fence I have an Idea it would be a website and then an event for preteens, to learn about puberty from someone who is around the same age and who has maybe been through the same things. At said event there would be a gift bag of sorts and a Guide for a growing girl. I would be doing with a group of 2 other girls. My other idea is a water conservation idea,we would have a site were you could enter in activities you do every day and see how much water you use and other things like that, there would also be an event. I need to chose soon but I need help so… Help me chose!
what schould i do for my silver award out of hellping a humansociety hellping dogs at shellters or hellping homleas kids.i would probley be working whith parents and friends.