Gold Award Approval times

[mashmaster]

For those of you out there that went through the Gold Award process, How many times and how long was the approval process for you?

 

My daughter has been going back and for with the committee since April.  I have never dealt with such a horrible process before.

[bsaggcmom]

In our council they tell the young ladies to be prepared for a 2-4 month wait after turning the initial proposal into the council office before being assigned an advisor. And that's after a guaranteed 3-4 rewrites of the proposal, the words of the council professional that handles the proposals. Then the advisor can pull the plug on the project if the candidate is not progressing at a pace the advisor sees fit. Also, there is no guarantee that the candidate will be picked up by an advisor. If no advisors want to deal with a candidate in your area/town then the proposal sits and waits at the office until an advisor gives in and accepts it. The advisor could be a very long distance from the candidate too. My daughter has dragged her feet for 6 months getting the vaguely worded proposal written up and may miss out on her chance to get her award. She's going into senior year of high school.

 

She may have found a work around however. One of her cub summer camp staff friends met with her advisor at camp and introduced my daughter to her. The advisor told her to call when she had the proposal written up and they'd talk. Maybe we can skip the council crap and move on.

 

Our council pro is a real piece of work too. If she knows you're involved with the BSA and have Eagle project experience she really takes a dislike to you and your candidates will wait until they age out and never get an advisor. The GSUSA paperwork is so vague and useless too. The proposal is just the first step by the way. There is also a final write up that has to be finished after the project is done and it has to be done before they age out. The final paperwork hassles have cost 3 of my ladies their awards. They did the project but couldn't get the paperwork through council to its satisfaction in time.

 

Good luck to your daughter.

[mashmaster]

WOW!  That sounds so aweful.  There have been a lot of tears shed already in my house over the process.  

[qwazse]

Sounds like lots of regional variations. The girls in our district have it tough (the reporting phase being definitely most challenging part of the Gold), but not unobtainable. Certainly our female venturers who are in the GSUSA do fine with it. Their connections to BSA are no way an impediment. In fact, those connections increase the volunteer pool for the project itself.

 

Then again, most of our events include open invites to Girl Scouts from he boots-on-the ground. So, any such bias from a professional would get zero traction around here.