Young Women- Personal Progress Tracking

    I was put into my wards Young Woman's program about 3 1/2 years ago as the secretary.  At the time, they were not really keeping track or having a lot of progression with their personal progress.  I thought maybe if there was a visual reminder and reward system (in a way) that might encourage them to work on it.  I thought I would try a sticker system and every time they would pass off one of the experiences and/or projects we would place a sticker on the chart.  I go a couple of poster boards and started working.  So the specs of the poster are this:
  Top area and bottom area are 7 1/2 cm
  Name slots 2.2 cm in length by 9 cm wide
  Each experience and project slot is 1 cm wide- you will need 54 of them.



To make all of this fit, you will want to turn the poster with it turned wide, not long for all of them to fit.  I used a sharpie between each name slot and in between each each value.  I also used a sharpie on the slot for the projects.  The rest of the slots, I just used a black pen.  This way, I could tell the difference between the values to place the stickers on.  The first version, this is as far as I went, but I think I have perfected it in the past 3 years.  Here are the other suggestions I would suggest to add.
       At the beginning of each value, at the top of the slot, add a small letter to indicate the value in that section.  I used the color of the value too.  Faith- F (Black since it's a white board!), Divine Nature- DN (Blue), Individual Worth- IW (Pink or Red), Knowledge- K (Green), Choice and Accountability- CA (Orange), Good Works- GW (Yellow), Integrity- I (Purple), and Virtue- V (Gray-also because most marker sets don't have gold!).  I learned this one because when one of our girls graduated or moved out, we would cut their name out and send it with them to remember.
     When I originally wrote everyone in, I left a couple of blank spots in between each group just in case we had any move-in's.  I also did put all of the leaders on the chart too because we really do encourage the leaders in our ward to work on Personal Progress with our girls.  I have learned that we need to have blank name inserts we can just put over a previous leaders name if they are released before they complete any of their things.  I have had to do this a few times now.
     The latest idea we have had is to cut each strip separately, laminate them, put a magnet on the back, and place it on a galvanized steel sheet.  You can buy the galvanized metal sheet at Home Deopt for $9.34.  We have recently had one girl graduate, two girls move out, one girl baptized, two girls move up from primary, and two new leaders brought in.  Needless to say, they were not all right in a row.  This would mean a lot of chopping and taping of the poster, thus evolved the magnet board.  This way, when someone from the middle group moves in or out, you will not have to cut up and repair the poster.  You can make several extra so when you get new beehives, you can just add them to the bottom!



   So here is our final poster with all of the stickers attached (minus the names for security purposes!).  This worked so well for our group of girls.  You will be surprised how inspiring a few stickers can be towards reaching a goal!  We have had 5 girls completely finish in just 3 years with 3 more within a few more experiences or projects of it! 

I finally finished the magnet board part of the poster!  Doesn't it look awesome?  It did cost a little more than I had planned on.  The sheet metal at the actual store of Home Depot was $19.97, not the $9.34 as advertised online.  We needed an extra 4" and a 12X8" piece was $7.97.  I used a white picture frame molding that was about $0.71/ foot for the front. 



The back side, I used 1/4" pine plain trim and attached it with screws and finishing nails.  I attached the wire hanging brackets to be able to hang the entire display on one of the doors in the Young Women's room.

 

Hope this can help your group too!

~Stacy~