Wait, What's a Gold Award?

                 Recently, I have been thinking about scouting in terms of gender. I know there’s a lot I could look at in terms of Girl Scouts vs. Boy Scouts in general or how girls can be Boy Scouts (or I guess just Scouts now, right?), but instead, I want to look at something a bit more specific: the Girl Scout Gold Award and the Boy Scout Eagle Award. Now I know that you guys probably might have some familiarity with one or both of these terms, but I will explain them both briefly.

                The Eagle Scout Rank is the highest rank in Boy Scouts. There are certain prerequisites needed to be done before a scout is eligible to do their Eagle Project (need to achieve all the ranks before that and have 21 merit badges total with 12 specific ones). Before you can start your project, you must submit proposal paperwork. The actual project must be “helpful to any religious institution, any school, or your community” and “benefit an organization other than the Boy Scouts of America.”* There is no specific length of time that the project should take. Once finished with the Eagle Project, you have your final paperwork turned in and you meet with the board of review to be approved.

                The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award in Girl Scouts. You must be in high school to get this award. There are certain prerequisites that need to be done before doing your gold project. For the prerequisites, you either do your Silver Award (which is very similar to the Gold Award, without an interview and a minimum of 50 hours of work) and 1 Journey or you complete 2 journeys (and these journeys should be for your level in Girl Scouts, journeys basically being much more complicated and lengthy badges requiring a Take Action Project). Once you have those prerequisites done, a girl scout must brainstorm, research, be interviewed, and submit a proposal before she can even start the project. A gold award project must take a minimum of 80 hours of work from the Girl Scout alone, must be sustainable and continue to last after the project is completed, and address a national or global issue. Once done with the project, the scout must fill out the final paperwork (which takes forever) and the committee must look over that paperwork and approve it (if it’s not approved then you will have to modify and add to your project as needed).

                As you can probably tell from these descriptions it takes a lot of work to earn these awards. There are also notable differences between the awards and I could go discuss which one is harder to earn (and really, there is a lot of variances between projects on both sides). However, I want to talk about the weight each award holds. In theory, it should be the same. Both the Eagle Scout Award and the Gold Award recipients will enter into the military one rank higher than they would have due to the award and both awards provide opportunities on college applications, job applications, and other events and applications. And both awards have been around for roughly the same time. But be truthful, did you know what the Gold Award was? Even if you don’t know fully what it takes to be an Eagle Scout, most people react to the name, knowing that it’s a really big deal and that person must have a lot of skills, talents, etc. And most people don’t know all the specifics, even I had to check and my brother’s an Eagle Scout, but people tend to know that it’s important. The Gold Award? I would be much more surprised if you had heard about it, and if you did know about it, it’s definitely not on the same level of respect as an Eagle Scout. There might be a vague sense of “Hey, this is might be important” since it is an award, but more like polite interest. The most common way to get people to understand is to explain that it’s the equivalent of the Eagle Scout Award. Then there is a response. But even then, there is a sense of “Oh, that’s the dumbed down girl version of the Eagle Scout Award.”

                I remember that when Boy Scouts decided that girls could join, people were talking about how girls could finally get the Eagle Scout Award. Um, hello? We actually do have an award that holds the same exact weight. Or at least it’s supposed to. I remember that when I finished up my Gold and was interviewed by the News-Gazette, my mom went on the News-Gazette and did a search. When she searched for “eagle scout” a whole bunch of stuff popped up talking about their projects usually in great detail. When she looked up “gold award,” can you guess what she found? Nothing. And that’s not because there are not Gold Award Girl Scouts around here. I know of several. And it’s possible that they did have articles done, but they didn’t make it on the online database because they were considered more minor articles like mine (but an article that did make it on was something about chickens). But the point still stands, while there is a long list for the Eagle Scouts in this area, the Gold Award Girls Scouts become kind of hidden. And to be honest, I don’t need a lot of recognition for my project. But what about my project itself? It would do my project a lot of good if more of the community knew more about it. The last thing I will say on this topic was the actual interview itself. The main things the reporter focused on: if I really lived in Homer, if I was actually good at science (my project was about STEM), and if the Gold Award was really equivalent to the Eagle Scout Award. I had to email him most of the specifics of my project later in an email so that he would have the information.

                Anyway, just some examples and things I have noticed as a Girl Scout. Consider this my way of helping spread the word of the Gold Award so that future Gold Award recipients can hopefully really be seen on the same level as the Eagle Scout. Until then, know that they’re out there. Did you know what a Gold Award was before this? Genuinely interested. (Also, sorry for such a long post).

*Source: https://www.scouting.org/resources/guide-to-advancement/eagle-scout-rank/