Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts recently celebrated the fact that Andover Girl Scouts Leah Cairns, Deborah Koo, Ariel Kuykendall, Kyla McRoy and Elizabeth Scoble earned their Girl Scout Gold Awards.
The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award that a Girl Scout 14-18 may earn. To earn the award, Scouts must complete a project that fulfills a need within a girl's community whether local or global, creates change, and hopefully, becomes an ongoing benefit, according the local Scouts. The projects also take organizational, leadership, and networking skills, and about two years to complete.
For the Girl Scout Gold Award, Leah Cairns spent 14 Saturdays throughout the months of July through October 2008 at the Farmers' Market in Andover. Leah worked closely with Sarah Sycz, the Andover Historical Society's educator, to create and lead educational hands-on activities for children. The activities ranged from vegetable print painting to corn-husk doll-making to tin-punching. Over 300 children participated in the activities. Leah created a booklet with activities, directions and leftover supplies, and donated them to the museum so that another young person could get involved in the future.
A lover of art and teaching, Deborah Koo learned about Books of Hope, a service-learning program where U.S. schools sponsor a school abroad and create books to help meet the students' educational needs in Uganda, Africa. For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Deborah created flyers to entice students to participate through Andover Public Schools' Sanborn Explorations after-school program. She educated the younger students on the conditions in Africa and the need for books there, leading the local students for eight weeks. The books' final destination: the Latigi Orphan Care Center in Uganda, Africa.
Ariel Kuykendall began working with children in Jaurez, Mexico in 2006 through the Harvest Hands Ministries. The mission work she did there inspired her to base her Gold Award project on further aiding these children. Ariel discovered that school supplies were in high demand but the need was not being met. The Free Christian Church and other Andover community members banded together with Ariel to raise enough school supply donations to fill 20 backpacks destined for Jaurez. Ariel created a Web site for others to read and learn about Jaurez and to feel inspired to take action.
For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Kyla McRoy developed the Pet Assisted Therapy for Children in the Educational System program for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Through her PATCHES program, Kyla and her Delta-registered Golden Retriever, Saffron, set out to work with the children at West Elementary. Kyla created and documented activities that incorporated specially trained behaviors from her canine friend. Canine-story reading sessions proved to be quite successful. Superintendent Claudia Bach agreed to continue the project in the future with a puppy named Shadow.
Elizabeth Scoble created an environmental workshop and group for girls at Esperanza Academy. Elizabeth planned and led classroom sessions around general environmental learning, such as recycling and green energy. She involved Raks Derival, a chemist, to work with the girls to build solar cells. Liz also introduced the concept of community supported agriculture and ran the program at Appleton Farms. The girls planted shallots, toured the farm and learned about composting. Elizabeth also helped to connect Esperanza school with Appleton Farms for future collaborations.
