4/10/21

I didn’t do too much today, but I spent a lot of time planning and taking pictures for my website. Some of the pictures were easy to get, but I’m having a hard time coming up with two of the pictures: the main banner at the top, and the “About Us” section. I need something general for the top banner, but hopefully something that relates to Girl Scouts. All of the ideas that I have, I can’t do. But it’s really important that I get these pictures soon so I can start promoting my website. 

I also spent some time thinking about a schedule for the live events in May. I came up with a few different series to host (career, wellness, and watch party).

 

4/9/21

Part 1 (morning): I sent out my survey yesterday through a bunch of different platforms so I could get a range of views. I got 13 responses as of today, and they are making me rethink my project a bit. Most of the responses say similar things: that their troop has become less active, but they have become more active within the GS organization. Most of their favorite parts of GS is meeting new girls, and people wish there were more opportunities for them to meet girls from other troops, councils, or parts of the country. This is making me want to shift my project a bit from less of independent resources, to community based resources. I want to focus less on the Badge Guides (but still make them), and focus more on events that would connect girls virtually. A lot of them also showed more interest in guest speakers, so maybe having the events be actual Zoom meetings rather than webinars would give more of a community feel. I was also thinking of hosting some fun events, like watch parties to bring people together.

Part 2 (evening): I think I am more excited about my project with the direction I’m taking my project. So far, I’ve reached out to Audra Fordin and Judaline Cassidy to see if they would be interested in doing some guest speaking events. Audra Fordin used to be a Girl Scout leader, and she often works with Girl Scout troops, so I’m hopeful about her response. And Judaline Cassidy is a plubmer and the founder of Tools and Tiaras, a program that helps encourage girls to get into trade jobs. I think it would be awesome if either of them could speak. I also reached out to Ajahni to see if he could connect me with anyone at the zoo because I want to get a range of different views for speaking to do a sort of career series. I also spoke to my mom about finding authors/publishers to speak. Aside from that, I spent some more time looking over the responses. 

I didn’t get a chance to take many of the pictures I wanted to because it was a bit cloudy out today, but I hope to get them done over the weekend.

I’m having a bit of a hard time finding a good book to read for research, especially since my question is more Girl Scout specific now. I am kind of taking a gamble when I get one. I am thinking of ordering the “Girl Scout Handbook” because it should encompass a bunch of aspects of Girl Scouts, and hopefully I can apply some to my project. The only issue is it’s the 1913 version… We’ll see how it goes.

 

4/8/21

Today was kind of a slow day. I had to run some errands, so my project time was cut a bit. I started off by making the Google Form to send to high school Girl Scouts to get their input on how the organization helps them, or doesn’t help them as they get older. I want to make sure that I’m not the only one struggling to find resources. I sent the form to my troop, a large group of girls I worked with over the summer, a Girl Scout Discord server, the Girl Scouts subreddit, and the school. I want to get a range of opinions and views, not just from my troop. I was worried I wouldn’t get any responses, but I’ve already gotten 8 today. I am waiting to look at the responses until I have a few more. Then I’m going to put the written responses on a document or spreadsheet. A few of the girls said they would be interested in doing a Zoom meeting interview which would be really helpful.

I also went through my website with my mom and edited it. It was helpful to get another pair of eyes. I also added one picture to the “About Us” section of the website, and I plan to take the other ones tomorrow. I think it should be fairly easy to get four useful pictures. Then my website will have a good foundation and I can start reaching out to experts. I am going to do the same with my Instagram once I get some more pictures tomorrow. Once I do that, I am going to reach out to troops through Instagram to hopefully make some connections and get people interested in my programs.

 

4/7/21

I was honestly lacking motivation today, so I spent the day mostly doing research. There aren’t really any formal books that talk about leading Girl Scout troops/activities, but there are a lot of leader-made podcasts and videos, so I spent the morning listening to some of those. I listened to one specifically about bringing in guest speakers and connecting that to badge work, which is exactly what I want to do for my project. They gave a lot of great ideas about who you can bring in, even virtually.

That led me to start making a list of experts I would like to have in a webinar. I want to keep adding to the list because I think it could be really cool to have a bunch of guest speakers, and even if not many people come to the actual webinars, I can record them and link them on my blog as resources.

I also did some research about hosting webinars because I had never done one with Zoom before. I’m going to actually test it out tomorrow with my mom and sister to see if it works, but it seems pretty straightforward.

Through the rest of this week, I want to get a really solid foundation with my website and social media so I can start to reach out to experts about guest speaking. I’m going to edit the text parts of the website with my mom tomorrow, and take pictures to finalize it. The rest of the website, like the pages and tabs, will likely change throughout my project, but I think I have a good foundation as of now. I have 

• Home
• About Us
• Badge Guides
• Upcoming Events (where you can RSVP right on the site)
• Contact
• Forum (where people can ask questions about badge work, post tips, or share progress. I’m not sure if people are going to use it, but I think it’s good to have)

I also want to reach out to high school Girl Scouts this week to send them surveys about their opinions about Girl Scouts at the high school levels, just to see if they agree that there are fewer resources. I’m planning to make that survey tomorrow, and connect with troops.

 

4/6/21

I got quite a bit of work done today. I started off by going to Staples to pick up the big badge document I made yesterday. When I got home, I put it in a binder and organized it by category or type of badge (outdoors, research, making things, etc.) so it would be easy to go through. Then I went through each badge and wrote down some initial notes or ideas for activities that I might want to include in the badge guides. I had been thinking about some of them before so some were easy, but doing this made me realize that there were some in there that I couldn’t really do, usually because I’m not really qualified to teach that topic, or the steps are far too vague for me to even come up with any ideas for activities.

After I went through my initial notes, I decided to draft a badge guide for the Cross-Training senior badge. I chose this one because it was fairly straightforward. I started on just a Google Doc going through each step and providing ideas for activities. Once I did this, I decided to transfer the information to a nicer looking template on Canva. I spent some time editing what I had written earlier and reformatting it to look nicer. Once I finished with that, I decided to just put it in a blog post to see what it would look like, and I’m pretty satisfied with it. I went back to edit my website and changed the colors to match those from the Canva template, and I think everything is coming together nicely.

I also sent an email out to the copyright section of GS, so hopefully I will hear back from them this week to confirm that I can use the pictures of the badges.

Throughout the rest of the week, I want to think more about the pictures (because after that, my website will be all set up), research GoToWebinar, a free program GS has used for live events before, and work more on the badge guides so I could even start actually posting them. I also want to work on designing and building up the Instagram account so I can start networking with troops online. I also have to organize and make Drive folders to hold the finalized badge guides from Canva, so I can have them in multiple places for safekeeping.

 

4/5/21

I think I had a pretty strong start today. I finished my big document that has all the badges I would ultimately want to make guides for. I know that the number I have right now is realistic, but it gives me some wiggle room in case some of the badges fall through. I just sent that document off for printing at Staples so I can put it in my binder and hopefully start coming up with some ideas later this week. I also started designing my website using Wix. I used Wix before for my Gold Award, so it hasn’t been too difficult. The only hard part for me will be getting pictures. I have to get relevant pictures that don’t include girls’ faces for privacy reasons. I want to have these pictures soon so I can start advertising my website and building my social media presence so I can get people interested in maybe coming to some live events. Maybe I can take some pictures of my sash, some basic activities I would host, stuff like that. Just to get started. Hopefully I will be able to get more pictures as I go to make it look better. Right now, I only have 5 places on my website where I would need pictures, so it shouldn’t be too difficult now that I think about it. I also made a quick Instagram account so I could snag the username “hsgsresources.” I plan on creating some sort of logo during my work this week.

I also have to email GS about using their images of badges, because they are copyrighted. If I can’t use them, I’m not too sure what I’ll do because I need pictures of the badges for my blog. Maybe I can see if I can do some quick illustrations of them digitally to make them look clean. If I get permission to use the pictures, I should put all of them in a Drive folder so I can have them organized and I don’t have to keep downloading them.

Once I get my website up and running, and get my printed document, I’ll feel pretty good about where I am. I am excited to get the document because I’m going to put it in a big binder so I can work on paper. I hate working on computers when something is really visually based, or based in idea generation. Once I have it printed, I can do some sort of mind map type thing for the different badges. Coming up with activities for some of the badges is hard, I’ve had to do it myself for lots of badges. But I’m already itching to get ideas down for some of them. For example, for the “Car Care” badge for seniors, I’m hoping I can do a live session with Audra Fordin, the owner of Great Bear Auto Shop in Flushing. She strives to give women and families a really welcoming experience at auto shops. She also started the “Women Auto Know” campaign that strives to educate women about car care so they can make educated decisions about where to get their cars fixed, since women are too often taken advantage of and underestimated in the auto world. I think it would be really interesting to do a live session with her, and she has done lectures in the past, so I hope she would be open to partnering with me for this.

I also set up a little study hall in my Zoom room with some friends to keep us on track. Everyone said it was really helpful for them, and it really helped me too. I have a hard time getting motivated sometimes, especially when I’m working on my own. I think we are going to just keep the room open all the time so people can pop in whenever they want to get some work done. Even if no one else is in the room, just having Zoom open helps me stay focused.

Overall, I’m really excited to continue my work on this project, and I think I’m off to a good start!