Earning a Bronze or Silver Award provides opportunities to develop life skills, grow in leadership, work as part of a team, and face challenges.

“The Bronze and Silver Awards are a great opportunity to use your voice to make the world a better place,” said Brynne Hall, Program Coordinator – Girl Leadership for Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania. “You don’t have to be an adult or even in high school to inspire change! And, if a Girl Scout would like to earn their Gold Award as a Senior or Ambassador, Bronze and Silver are great steppingstones to learn how to research and address an issue in the community with long-lasting impact.”

If you’ve been thinking about working toward either of these Highest Awards — Bronze is earned by Juniors and Silver is earned by Cadettes — check out this step-by-step guide, with information provided by Hall.

For the Bronze Award:

Build your Girl Scout Junior team. Think about whether you all want to work together in your troop, or whether you might like to try smaller groups to tackle different topics. Sit down together and map out who has similar interests or passions to decide on who might want to work together.

Explore your community. Ask lots of questions to different people who work in topics you are interested in, and ask them what kinds of issues they see in that topic. For example, ask animal shelter staff what issues they notice when people are looking to adopt animals or when animals are given up for adoption. You can also do online research to learn more about the topic you are interested in.

Decide on a project to work on. This is where you will decide on how to Take Action and make a project that will help your community and also educate them on your issue that you chose.

Make a plan of action. Plan out what all you will need: supplies, adult help, how long your project will take, approvals required to get started, etc. You should also let Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania know that you are working on your Bronze Award through the Bronze Award Proposal Form on our website.

Put your plan in motion. Now you get to Take Action and make your changes happen!

Spread the word. Submit your Bronze Award Final Report to share your hard work with Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania, and then tell the world! You can use social media, newspaper articles, posts on local bulletin boards, whatever helps get the word out about your project and the issue it addressed.

For the Silver Award:

Find an issue you care about. Make a list of all of the issues and topics you are passionate about. It’s OK if there are several!

Build your Girl Scout Silver Award team or decide to go solo. The Silver Award is completed by small groups (four or fewer Girl Scouts) or as individual projects. See what other issues your troopmates are interested in, and decide if anyone has similar interests to you and you could combine your efforts.

Explore your community and think of how that issue affects your community. Take the list you made in the first step and go out to talk to experts in those fields in your community. They can have a lot of great insight into the issues your community faces and what might help the root cause of that issue. After your research, you should have a better idea of which issue you would like to tackle.

Choose a Silver Award project that can lead to lasting change. Decide on how you want to help toward your chosen issue in your project.

Develop your project. Plan out how much time you need to complete your project, if you will need certain supplies, if you will need to fundraise, if there are permissions you will have to get before starting. Also, consider how your project will be sustainable. How will it continue to make an impact after you are done with the initial efforts? It’s recommended that you partner with a community organization for this piece. Also think about how you will be educating the community on your selected issue.

Make a plan and put it into motion. Share your plan with Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania through the Silver Award Proposal Form so we can help support you along the way. Then go ahead and take action to help make your community better!

Reflect, share your story, and celebrate. Once you have completed your project, submit your Silver Award Final Report to get recognized for your efforts and figure out how to let your community know about everything that went into your project and how you addressed a specific issue.