Community Service Vs ​Take Action

Has your troop held blanket drives or canned food collections?  Painted a bench in a park?
​Perhaps they volunteered at a beach cleanup?

  These are great examples of community service projects, but are not enough to qualify as Take Action Projects.

The Journeys and Highest Awards challenge Girl Scouts to use critical thinking skills to identify the root causes of community issues.  Take Action Projects must address these root issues with long term solutions, helping the community through direct action, education and advocacy.

A good Take Action project can have community service elements, but if they are removed
​there will still be a project that offers a long term solution.

​

​Think you understand?
Test your skills!


Have Take Action Project idea?
​Give your Take Action project the test!

Ready to teach your troop how to spot the difference or take their projects to the next level?
Here are some tools to use at your meetings. 

  • Handouts
  • Discussion and brainstorming
  • Leadership skills comparison
  • Matching Game
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  • Handout with explanation and examples
  • Even more examples!
  • Matching game "cards"
  • Cupcake test
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cs_vs_take_action__poster_-_with_table.pdf
File Size: 398 kb
File Type: pdf
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cs_vs_take_action_matching_cards_with_issue.pdf
File Size: 905 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
cs_vs_take_action_matching_cards_with_issue.docx
File Size: 32 kb
File Type: docx
Download File

Build the skills to think beyond community service.  
Start by having the Girl Scouts brainstorm a short list of ways they would like to help their community. You can use the  community projects from the chart or think back to service they have already done.
Start with community service projects.
Then ask questions, such as:
             How could we make what we do last longer ?
             How could it have a bigger impact or reach more people ?
             Who else could we get to help us ?
             Who could we teach to do the same thing we did ?

SKILL OR LEADERSHIP COMPARISON
Ask the girls to make two charts.
       Chart 1 ( Community Service ) List the skills they would need to volunteer at an event.
       Chart 2 ( Take Action) List the skills they would need to plan an event and invite others to be the 
        volunteers under their direction.

The example below was created by Senior Girl Scouts (9th-10th grade) during a Girltopia Journey.
​ They used attending a beach cleanup (Community Service) VS organizing and running a monthly beach cleanup (Take Action).  You could do this exercise with any of the examples in the charts from this page.

INTERACTIVE ACTIVITY
Matching "game". 
​Have the girls write down the descriptions of Community Service & Take Action (CS & TA) on poster paper or a whiteboard.  Put them side by side.
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Suggested directions: Print out & cut up the "cards" of the chart below. Form even teams. Chose the number of examples you will use based on the size of your group.  Each girl takes a project description & decides which side her project belongs in, the CS group or the TA group.  (Hint for them - there will be the same number of girls in each group.). Once they figure out their correct group, have them find the one that "matches" theirs. Explain that it won't "match", but that the girls in the CS group should find the person in the TA group who makes their project bigger or uses more leadership and problem solving. Sometimes the TA project is a different way to approach the same topic.
​The list contains letters if you want to make it easier for the girls to find their "partner".  If they want more of a challenge, cut off the letters.