Gold Award (Girl Scouts of The USA) - Requirements

Requirements

Senior Girl Scouts aged 14–18 are eligible to earn the award. The guidelines are currently in transition to include the Girl Scout Journey program.

The new requirements take effect in fall of 2011. They include:

• Complete two Girl Scout Senior or Ambassador Journeys or complete one Girl Scout Senior or Ambassador journey and have earned the Silver Award.
• Plan and implement an individual "Take Action" project that reaches beyond the Girl Scout organization and provides a sustainable, lasting benefit to the girl's larger community. (Old project guidelines as described below still apply.) The suggested minimum hours to complete the steps to the Girl Scout Gold Award is now 80 hours.

If the majority of work will be done after fall of 2011, troops and girls must use the new requirements. If most of the work will be done before that, troops and girls can choose either set of guidelines.

The old requirements updated in 2004 include:

• The Girl Scout Gold Leadership Award, which requires girls to complete 30 hours of leadership work, as well as earn three Interest Projects and one Focus Book relevant to their project.
• The Girl Scout Gold Career Award, which requires girls to complete 40 hours of career exploration.
• The Girl Scout Gold 4Bs Challenge, which requires girls to assess their community and its needs, and develop a vision for change. Up to 15 hours work on the 4Bs challenge may be counted toward the 65 hours for the service project.

Once these steps have been met, girls use their vision for change to complete a service project that reaches beyond the Girl Scout organization and provides lasting benefit to the girl's larger community. It requires a minimum of 65 hours of work in planning and actually completing the project. All of these hours must be completed by the Awardee, and though it is encouraged that the girl use troop members and other from the community to help her, their time spent does not count towards her 65 hour requirement. Plans must be developed with the aid of an advisor, then a project proposal must be submitted and approved by the girl's local council before starting the project, and a final report after the project's completion.