Have you seen the new Personal Progress booklets? They’re fabulous. Take everything you loved about Personal Progress before, and now put a fresh look on it, spiral bind it for easy usage, and invite all women (and men) to participate.
I love how updated the book is, but more importantly, I love how functional it now is. With the addition of the value Virtue to the Young Women theme and program, the church needed to update many of its materials including posters, manuals, and the Personal Progress book.
The organization of the book is very similar to how it was before, but there are some cool added features, and the program itself has some added features including a fabulous scripture reference in the back of the book that allows you to find relevant scriptures on any of the values and check them off as you study them.
The seven previous values have much the same look and feel with three required experiences, three additional experiences (which the young women can personalize), and a value project. Virtue is different. As the culminating value, there are four required experiences and then the value project is to read the Book of Mormon and record your testimony. After completing these experiences (and trust me, they will take a while), you earn your Young Womanhood Recognition.
This used to be the end of the program, but now you can earn an additional Honor Bee charm for continuing to develop qualities becoming of an LDS woman. This cute bee-shaped charm is earned after reading the Book of Mormon a second time and providing 40 hours of service (preferably using some of these hours to mentor another Young Woman as she works on her Personal Progress). I love how these additional requirements both keep the young woman focused on her own spiritual progression but the progression of others as well.
The requirements for leaders remains unchanged, but I love the added emphasis on encouraging mothers to participate in Personal Progress with her daughter. They’re encouraged to earn the recognition before or at the same time as her daughter by following the same requirements as the young women themselves. As mothers and daughters work together, they’ll build a special bond and grow to honor womanhood.