Do you know a girl(s) who wants to make a difference in the lives of others, perhaps through the Girl Scout Silver or Gold Award? Girls who participate in Challenge and Change can work with a team of her friends, family, and community leaders to carry out a plan for community improvement. In addition, each team will receive funds to help complete the project.
Challenge and Change: Challenge Yourself, Change the World is a teen leadership program. The program teaches teen girls how to:
- design and lead projects that create positive change in their own community
- gives girls real-world experiences that build skills of leadership,
- problem solving,
- social entrepreneurship
Challenge and Change takes place over the course of several months.
Girls take part in the Challenge and Change Leadership training. Girls learn skills like: how to identify problems, define solutions, gather community resources, implement a plan, and lead a team. They also learn more about themselves, make new friends, and discover more about their communities. By the end of the training, the girls have created a detailed plan for community action. After the training, girls return to their communities and apply the skills they learned and begin to implement their plan.
Examples of previous projects include:
- Building a skate park for a community
- Starting a community recycling program
- Starting a doggie daycare program
- Starting an Internet café in the community
Sounds like a good deal, right? To participate girls must:
- Live in a rural community with a population of less than 10,000
- Be able to identify a project advisor or adult volunteer to guide the team through the project development
- Complete the Challenge & Change training/curriculum
- Involve friends, family, and community leaders in carrying out the project
- Be able to complete a project by March 15, 2012
For more information, please contact Michelle Johnson at 314.592.2344 or
mjohnson@girlscoutsem.org.
Read about how girls are making a difference through Challenge and Change
Funding for Challenge and Change generously provided by:
- Palmyra Community Endowment Fund and Grace Unified Methodist Church of Quincy, through the Community Foundation of the Quincy Area
- Girl Scouts of the USA and U.S. Department of Agriculture