Personal Progress Badges

Materials for the Personal Progress program for young women 

Personal Progress is a program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for young women ages 12 to 18.  The program is based on eight moral values important to the Church: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity, and virtue.  Each value has six experiences for young women to complete, such as saying daily prayers for three weeks or having a conversation with a mother or leader about honesty.  After a young woman has completed the six projects for a value, she designs and carries out a ten hour project related to the value.  For instance, to complete her Good Works ten hour project, a young woman might spend time volunteering in a nursing home.

Personal Progress badges are an idea from the Mormon Badge Project to motivate young women to complete the program.  Each Personal Progress badge will recognize the completion of one of the six required experiences for a value.  The Church already awards bookmark ribbons to each girl for completing all the requirements for an entire value, but badges for each experience are a way of recognizing the smaller steps a young woman takes in Personal Progress, encouraging her to keep working to complete the program.

A brainstorm drawing of what a Personal Progress Badge
might look like (see the circle with the LDS temple outline)

Another advantage of using digital badges with personal progress is that they could interface with the version of Personal Progress available online.  Digital rewards would cause a gamification of the program, attracting a generation of youth who enjoy using digital media and video games.  Further, if a young woman in the program could share a badge she earned on her Facebook profile, it would be a way of sharing her beliefs with friends who are not members.  Sharing Personal Progress badges on Facebook could open up conversations about the Church youth programs and Mormon beliefs.

The Mormon Badge Project hopes to have a proto-type Personal Progress badge to display within a week or so.  Stay tuned!  If you participate in the Personal Progress program, leave us a comment.  Would you like to see badges for Personal Progress?  Why or why not?