New Challenge Awards

[AnneinMpls 10]

G'mornin folks

Would love to hear opinions on the new challenge awards that national put out. You can read about them here: http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_central/challenge/default.asp

I've looked into the Challenge 2 for our Juniors and am thinking it's a hard-sell - very paper and pencil. What do you think?

Anne in Mpls

[ScoutNut 147]

OK, my first thought was - GSUSA is putting the requirements online - for FREE!!! They are not forcing girls to pay $3 for a 2 page brochure!!! Then I downloaded the award order form & discovered why they give the requirements for free. The sticker shock of paying for a piece of paper AND a $3 pin or $6 necklace would probably make Troop Leaders keel over!

 

Seriously, $6 for a necklace that the girls will wear MAYBE 1X, if at all !?

 

Yes, the Junior level is mostly a fill in the blanks kind of thing. It might not be very hard to sell if there was a point to the award. Just for the tacky 6 buck necklace that most will not want to be seen in - no way, why should the girls bother.

 

For Girls 11-17, once again, GSUSA seems to ignore the fact that 6-7(18yo) years is WAY to big an age spread to use the same requirements for. And, as with the Juniors, why should they bother going thru the time & effort of finding a community issue, doing interviews, group discussions & surveys of 20+ people, and then finding someone to correct the issue, when all they get out of it is an expensive necklace they are even LESS likely to wear than the Juniors are?

 

At least the Silver & Gold 4B's Challenge Charms, as lame as the charms are, were individualized for the 2 levels & had a purpose beyond simply earning the tacky charm.

 

Personally, I much preferred the Cadette & Senior Challenge Awards. They needed some work, but they were really pretty good & the cost of the pins was around $2. The pins could be put on the vest & would be visible whenever the girls decided to actually wear their vest. They were also requirements for the Silver & Gold Awards.

 

Since these new awards are part of National's attempt at creating "a consistent, national Girl Scout experience", it sounds like the "4B's" might eventually be replaced. A consistent, national Girl Scout experience is a great idea, & one they should have been working on a LONG time ago, but I can't say I am a fan of these awards.

 

I just wish GSUSA would get it's head out of it's nether region and figure things out COMPLETELY (& consistently) before dropping them on their members. Instead they do things in dribs & drabs, that are badly communicated & change, it seems, almost weekly!

 

 

 

 

[AnneinMpls 10]

lol....tell us how you really feel Scoutnut )

 

A. Umm, yha, $6 a pop? I have 17 girls in our troop. That's over a hundred dollars that I *know* the girls would rather spend on a camping trip or horseback riding.

 

B. By Girls For Girls? Are they kidding? What girl would have *ever* come up with these requirements. I can't tell that they had any input from any girl any where for this new scheme.

 

C. Girl Scouts 11-17 - after all of the hullabaloo over how teen girls are *really* subdivided into three age groups, they come up with one truly awful set of requirements that are over the heads of the 11-13 year olds, irrelevant to 13-16 year olds, and *yawn* pedantic for the 16-17 year olds.

 

D. The same necklace! It's the same dangblasted necklaces for both the Juniors and the 11-17s! Ok, one's maroon and one's blue. Ooooh. And the 4th graders don't even think they're cool!

 

Please can't we make it stop?

Anne in Mpls

[Wishboat 10]

Is your council allowing this new (IMPROVED! SURE TO BE A HIT!not)challenge to be used as part of a silver or gold award? Ours said no way. Of course, they're also not allowing any mix-and-match earning of the "old" and the "new" requirements for gold or silver it's one way or the other.

 

Now that we have

the older IPAs

the older online IPAs

the newer online IPAs

focus books

and

traditional methods of earning traditional IPAs

traditional methods of earning older online IPAs

new methods for earning newer online IPAs

the modified methods for earning any of the older IPAs

 

don't we all feel lucky to have such a wealth of options? Or do you feel they're just confusing the issues and the girls beyond human limits?

 

I ended up making a chart showing old, new and modified just so my troop might be able to understand what they can do.

 

But back to the what's-the-point-again new challenge. My girls (now Seniors) have griped the most about the challenges on both levels. My daughter (sigh) finally told me she will not be earning her Gold Award, simply because she will not do the busywork and paperwork involved. She'll end up doing all the requirements, but she's balking at the process.

 

So tell me what your councils have said I thought this new challenge wasn't official at all, just extra but some places are using it as a substitute?

 

Well, consistency isn't mentioned in the Law, right?

[sunsetandshadow 10]

We recently took our juniors to a badge night at the council and afterwards they each had brought some money to shop in the council store. Several girls picked out the new necklaces and thought they were cool and bought them. (Yes, I thought my daughter paid too much). But with so many girls there we (the leaders) did not even notice that the necklace was an award. The browines were buying the browine necklace with the 4 girls on it (it is not an award) so the older girls went for the necklace hanging in the junior section next to hair bows and braclets. My point is that no one there at the store ever mentioned that the necklaces were awards and just let the girls buy them. It wasn't until after the girls got home that someone at council called the leader and mentioned it to her. She asked them why they didn't say something before when we were buying them. So now the girls wear their necklaces to every scout meeting and we just got the printed sheet for them to hurry up and fill out so it can all be legal. sounds crazy to me.