The Ambassador Girl Scout Way badge is part of the “Legacy” badge set introduced in 2011.
Girl Scout Ambassadors are perfectly poised to help the sisterhood fly into its second powerful century. Although the badges, books, and presidents have changed along the way, some things have always been the Girl Scout Way: through song and celebration, service and action, the Movement continues to educate, inspire, and bring people together. Share the legacy in this badge as Ambassadors spread their wings and launch Girl Scouting into the future.
When a Girl Scout Ambassador earned this badge, she will know how to use the Girl Scout ways and traditions to make the world a better place.
Step 1: Use song to bring people together or to spread a message[]
Singing brings us all together and helps us feel connected, strong, and proud. Girl Scouts sing in special places or to mark special times – or sometimes just for the fun of it! As an Ambassador, use song to help you share what you care about most. Is your passion caring for the environment? Supporting girls’ rights around the world? Teaching younger girls how to get along? Inspire others to spread the message.
CHOOSE ONE:
Use music to move people to action. Throughout history, songs have helped rally people to causes. Find songs that give voice to hopes and concerns, learn their histories, and think about how and why they inspire. Then, pick a song that matches a cause about which you’re passionate, sing it with others, and get others inspired, too – that’s often a first step to making change.
OR
Organize a songfest for younger Girl Scouts. Together, decide on the message you want your songs to spread. Then, guide the girls toward great song with that spirit. Teach them the songs you know, those they’d like to know, and some songs hardly anyone knows yet. It’s a Girl Scout way to know the history of the songs we sing, so share those histories together as you prepare for the songfest.
FOR MORE FUN: Open or close your songfest with a Scouts’ Own.
OR
Bring generations together in song. Organize a Girl Scout alumnae event centered on singing – perhaps an alumnae tea during Girl Scout Week – and get former Girl Scouts singing their favorite Girl Scout songs and recalling cherished memories. Learn some songs that are no longer sung so you can pass them on to the Girl Scouts’ future.
Step 2: Celebrate World Thinking Day[]
Girl Scout celebrations honor women and girls who change the world. As an Ambassador, celebrate World Thinking Day. This event, which takes place every February 22, is both a chance to celebrate international friendships and, also, a reminder that the Girl Scouts of the USA is part of a global community: the World Association of Girl Guides (WAGGGS). Check the WAGGGS website to find out this year’s World Thinking Day theme, and, then, help younger Girl Scouts with one of the activities below.
CHOOSE ONE:
Follow in the steps of female leaders. Find out about women who have been leaders this year in areas relevant to the World Thinking Day theme. Think about the leadership qualities they’ve demonstrated and the lines of the Girl Scout Law they embody. Then, share what you’ve learned by helping younger Girl Scouts plan an event or project honoring these women – perhaps a community panel and party, a video interview, or a collective letter to your local newspaper.
OR
Make World Thinking Day cards. Get a group of girls thinking about what world peace and international friendship mean to them, and help them turn their ideas into drawings, paintings, collages, or other images for World Thinking Day greeting cards. Then, take the initiative to find a group that the cards will inspire and educate – perhaps the girls’ classmates, community members, or friends overseas. Organize sending the cards to the group you find.
OR
Earn their Thinking Day award. Research the World Thinking Day theme of the year and the steps girls need to complete the award at their grade level. Then, plan a workshop for adult volunteers to help them assist girls in earning the award. Collect any supplies the girls will need, and assemble resource kits for the adult volunteers.
Tip: Try to celebrate on World Thinking Day to enjoy the power and joy of the whole sisterhood – or you celebrate another day of your choice.
The Juliette Gordon Low World Friendship Fundwas brought into being to honor Juliette Low and her dream of increased understanding and friendship among girls around the world. The fund provides the ways and means for exchange visits between Girl Scouts and Girl Guides of other countries. If you are interested in making a donation – on your own or with your group – more information is available on the Girl Scout website. These contributions are, also, used to support the World Thinking Day Fund, which helps to encourage the development of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting in new countries.
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“Sisterhood” doesn’t mean just sisters in your family. All the girls and women who are Girl Scouts try to live by the Girl Scout Law. That’s what makes us a Girl Scout sisterhood – our Law unites us. In your Ambassador badge, use the Law’s 10 important lines to get closer to women and girls around the world.
CHOOSE ONE:
Explore an issue affecting girls and women globally. Invite a guest speaker to talk to your group about education, economic empowerment, health services, or other issues affecting women and girls. Your speaker might be a Peace Corp volunteer, someone from an aid organization, teacher, author, or a member of the religious community or armed forces who has served overseas. Guide a discussion of how you might use the Girl Scout Law to make a difference in the issue.
OR
Organize an event on women and STEM careers.People with careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) solve problems that affect girls and women around the world by figuring out how to use resources wisely to make the world a better place. But, in the U.S., men outnumber women in STEM careers nearly three to one. Help narrow the gap: Host a job fair or panel discussion to educate and inspire girls about STEM jobs. Guide the discussion to encourage girls to consider how geology, civil and environmental engineering, product innovation, nanotechnology, ethnobiology, and other fields could help them share the Girl Scout Law through their careers.
OR
Interview a global citizen. Find a woman in an international career field (perhaps a pilot, hotel staffer, international banker or teacher, naval officer, or translator) who is from another country or has lived abroad. Learn all about her job in an interview. Discuss the ways her job embodies – or could embody – the Girl Scout Law. Share what you’ve learned creatively – perhaps in an article for your school paper, in a career collage you keep by your desk for inspiration, or by organizing a roundtable “world thinking” careers discussion for your peers.
Women and Water. Girl Scouts doing their World neighbors badge in 1980 were challenged to try this activity – and Brownies on their WOW!Journey take part in a similar activity.
If you lived in one of the many desert or dry areas of the world, would you be able to carry water for long distance? In many places, women and girls must carry most or all the water needed in their homes each day. Try carrying a large pail nearly full of water around a block, a playing field, or a one-acre lot without spilling a drop. Then, see if you can carry a container with a small amount of water in it on your head for a short distance. Practice until you can walk with the container 3 meters (about 10 feet) without dropping it.
LANGUAGE = CONNECTION
Learning a new language opens the doors of the world in a way nothing else can. New words give you new ways to think: Some words and concepts in other languages have no English equivalent, and vice versa. Knowing more than one language is one of the most powerful skills a leader can have – you can communicate with people you otherwise couldn’t reach, and serve as a liaison between cultures, fostering friendships and goodwill. As the Girl Scout Handbooknoted in 1953: “If you want to learn a language, you can.” Today, there isn’t (yet) a badge like the World Interpreter badge from 1940 – but it’s inspiring to see what girls were doing then, and to imagine learning the skills to do the same.
Try writing the Girl Scout Law and Promise in the language chosen. If possible, compare these with an official copy in this language and see if you can discover any differences in meaning.
Translate quickly and accurately a conversation from a foreign language into English; one from English into a foreign language.
Start a collection of interesting words in the language that have become, either in the original or in slightly changed form, a part of our vocabulary.
Find out if there are any opportunities in your community where you might act as an interpreter to a person speaking the language but not speaking English well. For instance, you might assist in a baby clinic, helping to make foreign-born mothers feel comfortable and at home.
>>>Here’s one you could try, even if you’re just starting a new language: Decide how you would tell a group of Brownies about the language, about the people who speak it, and how you would give them a beginning interest in speaking this language, perhaps through a game or song. Be ready to do this if you are invited.
Girl Scouts’ Careers[]
ANNE SWEENEY ANNIE D’HARNONCOURT ELIZABETH DOLE
President, Disney/ABC Director and CEO Former president,
Television Group Philadelphia Museum of Art American Red Cross
DR. ANNA FISHER SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD LINDA BERRY
Astronaut Dean of Simmons College FBI agent
KAREN KAIN CYNTHIA ROSENZWEIG ELIZABETH WATSON
Prima ballerina NASA research scientist Houston police chief
JUDY WOODRUFF MARY HATWOOD FUTRELL SHEILA WIDNALL
Anchor and senior Former president, National U.S. Secretary of Air
Correspondent, PBS Education Association Force, retired
SHARI LEWIS BARBARA BRANDON RITA DOVE
Puppeteer Cartoonist 1993 U.S. Poet Laureate
SUSAN TAYLOR ASHA-ROSE MIGIRO ANNE PRINCESS
Editor-in-chief, First African Deputy Secretary- Olympian and president
Essencemagazine General of the United Nations of Save the Children
ELAINE JONES CAROL BELLAMY
Head of NAACP Legal Defense Executive director, UNICEF
& Education Fund
Step 4: Leave your world better than you found it[]
It’s the Girl Scout way to care about the world around us – whether it’s a room, a campground, or the world. As an Ambassador, try one of these choices to gather ideas right now for improving the world today – and at every stage of your life.
CHOOSE ONE:
Find ideas to use your leadership and ideas in government. Choose a civic issue that you want to affect throughout your life, and explore ways to make government a better place. Your list should include at least 10 strong ideas: Gather them through brainstorming with other Girl Scouts, by speaking with elected officials, and by researching the organizations working in your area right now. What are they doing? What still needs to be done?
OR
Gather ideas to work for a healthy planet. Choose an environmental issue that you want to affect throughout your life, and explore ways to make the environment a better place. Your list should include at least 10 strong ideas: You might focus on a specific ecosystem, such as forests, oceans, seashores, rivers, grasslands, mountains, or farmland, and research organizations working to protect that kind of area. What are other activists doing right now? How effective does the work seem to be? How could you support that work, and what else could you do?
OR
Brainstorm ideas for social change. Choose a social issue that you want to affect throughout your life, and explore ways to improve the systems that create or contribute to the issue. Your list should include at least 10 strong ideas: You might gather them through discussions with advocates for your issue, speaking with elected officials, or spending an afternoon volunteering for an organization doing work in your area of interest. What’s being done? What more could you do?
Tip: The ideas you gather in this step might even be the seed of your Gold Award or another Take Action project!
More to EXPLORE
100 Years of Powerful Women. What do you think it means to be a powerful woman in the world today? Does it mean doing well for yourself? Doing good? Being an innovator? What are your criteria – and who would you put on your list of the most powerful women in the past century? Some magazines – like Time, Forbes, and People– put out “top people” lists. Check them out – and make a list that will inspire you. Share it with women in your life.
Step 5: Enjoy Girl Scout traditions![]
Traditions bring people together. A tradition can be a special food, a ceremony, a song – anything that’s passed along through the years. Share your passion for Girl Scouting with the Movement’s next generation - and help our traditions stay strong for another 100 years (and more!).
CHOOSE ONE:
Pass down a tradition. Which Girl Scout traditions mean the most to you? Pick one that has exemplified your Girl Scout experience – perhaps a song, recipe, ceremony, or celebration – and share it with younger girls. Find younger girls at every level to teach, from Daisies to Seniors. Or, you might teach a vintage – and still useful – Girl Scout skill. (See yellow box for examples.)
OR
Start a Girl Scout tradition of your own. What have you created in Girl Scouting that you would like to go down in the Movement’s history? Perhaps it’s a song you wrote, a camp recipe you created, a particular way you completed a badge activity, or a successful program for which you can write a manual for girls and adult volunteers. Share it with the Girl Scout community in a sustainable way.
OR
Share the Girl Scout way by example. Find a fun way to show Daisies how the Daisy Flower Friends represent parts of the Girl Scout Law, how those values are important to leaders, and how they are leaders, too. Or, help Brownies, Juniors, Cadettes, or Seniors complete part of their Girl Scout Way badge.
Page from the Past 1913 Skills
The first Girl Scout handbook includes instructions on how to stop a runaway horse and how to tie up a burglar with eight inches of cord. It reveals much about how Girl Scouts – and the roles of girls and women – have evolved, and about how many skills have stayed useful over the years. For step 1, you might find one such skill and teach it. For example:
- “We walk too little in America. Between the trolley car and the automobile, the noble art of walking seems in danger of being lost. To use the expressive slang phrase, ‘it’s up to’ the Scouts to revive and preserve it.” How could you encourage more walking in your community?
- “As it may happen someday that a life may depend on a knot being tied properly, you ought to know the proper way to do so.” Perhaps you could teach a knot-tying workshop at your school.
- “Don’t try to cook with fat pine. It’s all right to kindle with, but not for cooking. Your bacon fried over it will be as fine as eating porous plaster.” Many people never learn to make a campfire. Could you teach them how, and show them how to cook something delicious over it?