A Silver Award or Gold Award project is an opportunity for you to put your leadership skills, career interests, and personal values together to serve your community. You may plan your project individually or you may choose to work with other Girl Scouts. If you choose to engage in a collective project, each member of the team must adopt equal amounts of responsibility, and everyone must be given an opportunity to learn and grow by acquiring the skills needed to accomplish the project goals. Your project should expand upon the skills that you have gained by completing the first four requirements.

Here are some basic guidelines:

• Your project should meet an expressed need in the community. Community service is always done without expectation of payment or reward.
• You are encouraged to go beyond the Girl Scouting community. If the project involves Girl Scouts, some segment of the project plan must include the outlying community – for example, by calling on people outside Girls Scouts as resources, doing something that reaches girls who aren’t Girl Scouts, or affecting something that us used by people other than just Girl Scouts.
• You may enlist others to help you or work through organizations to put your project in place, but it is your vision and leadership that should make it happen.
• You must consider what funding is necessary to successfully execute the project. Create a realistic budget that does not rely on securing grants or raising large sums of money. Remember that you cannot collect money for other organizations, however, you can ask for goods and services. Any fund raising or solicitation of materials needs to be approved by your Council.
• Review Safety Wise for do’s and don’ts.