Girl Scouts these days do so much more than selling cookies or creating arts & crafts. When these girls make crafts, it’s usually part of a larger project and for a good cause. And yet, there is still room for our girls to learn even more as they tackle service projects.
For several years, our Girl Scout Service Unit has gathered to decorate “Happy Hats” for the children in the Albany Medical Center, Pediatric Oncology Clinic. The girls enjoy transforming blank bandanas and caps into dazzling, wearable art that, we hope, will bring some cheer to hospitalized children. It’s a win-win situation where the girls have fun making crafts while doing good for others.
This year, keeping in mind the new Girl Scout Leadership Model (Discover, Connect, Take Action,) I decided to see if our Cadette Girl Scout troop could go beyond the craft activity to learn more about how we can help children with cancer.
Zink the Zebra Patch Program
If I’d had more time, I might have ordered the Zink the Zebra Patch Program from Girl Scouts USA:
The Zink the Zebra program provides Girl Scouts with activities that demonstrate the importance of understanding, respect, compassion, and acceptance of themselves and others.
This program acts as a vehicle to open discussion about cancer and other actual or perceived differences that touch the lives of virtually every girl and family.
Since I didn’t have the necessary lead time, I cobbled together resources I found online to jumpstart a Discover and Connect Workshop on Helping Kids with Cancer.
Talking To Girl Scouts About Kids with Cancer – Discover & Connect
I didn’t have a program guide to follow, but I did have the Girl Scouts Transforming Leadership guide which describes desirable connect outcome goals, sorted by age level.
For the purposes of a discussion with 7th Graders, I targeted two outcomes: promoting healthy relations where “girls learn to form and maintain meaningful and caring relationships;” and advancing diversity where girls learn to respect diverse life experiences.
With these goals in mind, I decided to focus our workshop on how to be a good friend to someone who has cancer.
Although Zink the Zebra’s storybook, and even a video of the play, can be found online; we skipped it in favor of starting with the story of Madison, a cancer survivor, who is the same age as my Girl Scouts. Her story highlights the value of caring friends:
“One of the ways we coped … was to schedule time for friends to visit often,” she says. “It helped just having them around to get your mind off of yourself.”
After reading this story, the girls took turns listing qualities of a good friend (bolstered by the Friendship Teaching Guide.)
We were then ready to learn about how to talk to a friend who is dealing with a serious illness (or other difficult life experience.) Reading from How to Talk to a Friend with Cancer and Suggestions for Talking with the Person with Cancer, we opened the floor for discussion and role playing exercises.
Helping Kids With Cancer – Take Action
Having discussed how they could be a good friend to someone dealing with a difficult life experience, the girls were set to Take Action.
My troop was already planning to join our Girl Scout Service Unit to decorate “Happy Hats” and make cards for the children in Albany Med’s Oncology Clinic. However, we’d also learned that craft kit donations would be much appreciated by kids who spend a lot of time waiting during clinic visits or while hospitalized.
Our girls rummaged through our collection of craft supplies to package a variety of craft kits in labeled Ziplock bags with instructions:
- Mini-scrapbooks made from cardstock paper that had been folded, hole-punched, and bound with yarn, before being decoratively labeled. The kits include a pen, crayons, and stickers.
- Sewing kits with cloth, needle, embroidery hoop and floss; as well as instructions for different several embroidery stitches.
- Lanyard and beads with instructions for making Chinese Staircase Bracelets.
Other Suggestions For Helping Kids with Cancer
For inspiration, we also looked at ways that others are helping out, including the very amusing Hugh’s Hair Challenge.
Girl Scout Book Drive Benefits Children With Cancer – Cadette Girl Scout is collection new books for children undergoing chemotherapy.
Local Girl Scouts Help Children With Cancer - Girl Scouts assembled Hope Binders.
Locks of Love – Collects hair to provide hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children who have lost their hair to long-term medical hair loss. One year, volunteers at our school fair organized a highly successful Locks of Love station where even my daughter shed her hair for the cause!
Reflection: Learn, Do, Share
Girl Scout Interest Projects require that we cover three components: Learn, Do, and Share. Sometimes, this can lead to complex and time consuming activities, such as our troop’s Go Green Projects.
Other times, I find that it’s best to back off and let the girls decide how much sharing they want to do. In this case, I figured that they’d done enough sharing with each other in the discussion workshop.
At this point, I don’t know if this workshop will inspire our girls to do more to help children who have cancer. At least, I’m confident that they’ll practice what they learned about being caring friends.
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ZZPP ? wow! keep it up.kudos!