The Girl Scouts was founded over 110 years ago with the idea of bringing girls together to learn about and explore the world around them. I joined when I was in Kindergarten and have had so many positive learning experiences, fun times with my troop and big adventures backpacking in Yosemite. I have hundreds of badges to show what I have done including two of Girl Scouts highest awards the Bronze and Silver Award. Today I am working to complete my Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award you can earn from Girl Scouts.
Earning the Bronze and Silver Awards
At the end of elementary school, my Girl Scout Junior troop had a lot of fun working together to help animals and earn our Girl Scout Bronze Award.
In middle school I partnered with another Cadette in my troop, Kaitlyn, to promote the 5 Character Pillars of our school and make the Black Mountain Middle School campus look better by painting a very large mural that still hangs on the walls outside the lunch area. This ambitious project took a lot of time, community involvement and eventually earned us the Girl Scout Silver Award. Here is a link to a video of our Girl Scout Silver Award Project process.
My Gold Award Project
The Girl Scout Gold Award is earned after completing a project to make the world a better place. My project has taken over a year from identifying a problem, finding an effective way to take action, working with community partners, and so much more. I started by identifying a need or problem in my community that I cared a lot about. This happened during the pandemic when we were all stuck inside and there were months when even parks and hiking trails were closed. During this time and even prior to it, I noticed that many children I knew chose to stay inside playing video games or watching shows all day. Most of them were not being exposed to nature, the way that I was or the way I thought they should be.
As a child I grew up hiking, camping, fishing, and as I got older I started hiking and backpacking. I knew that being out in nature is where my favorite memories were made and that thought helped me realize how I could take action. I isolated the problem that today's children were spending too much time inside on electronics and not enough time outside exploring nature. I also recognized that people I knew who were exposed to nature at an early age were more likely to spend time outdoors when they were older and people who were not exposed as young children rarely went out into nature.
For my Gold Award Project I wrote a children's book called Plugging Into Nature that tells the story of children going on an adventure through the woods and coming to the realization that there can be much good gained from these experiences. I also created the OutsiderGirl website to share information to help encourage others to go outside and enjoy all that nature has to offer. I hope this gives you motivation to get outside and explore for yourself.