Levittown HS Senior Earns Girl Scouts Of The USA’s Gold Award

LEVITTOWN, NY — A Levittown high school senior has earned Girl Scouts of the USA’s highest honor — the Gold Award — for her media project, “The Low Down,” which has aims to help her peers find their own voices in media, Levittown School District officials said.

Nicolette Kenney, a senior from Division Avenue High School who has been a scout since first grade, was inspired by Girl Scouts’ founder Juliette Gordon Low, who had a passion for media, joined the broadcasting club during her freshman year and soon developed her own passion, according to a district news release.

District officials said Gold Award recipients “tackle issues that they are passionate about and work towards enacting a change in their communities and beyond.” Kenney earned hers “after working diligently for more than a year on a passion project of hers,” district officials said.

When Kenney decided to join a sports journalism and broadcasting certification program at Hofstra University, she learned females were underrepresented in the media industry, and she wanted to change that scenario, so she set out to create “The Low Down” — a play on Low’s last name — with the goal of instilling confidence in girls to pursue careers in media, officials said.

“I wanted to help empower young girls and teach them that they can use their voices to speak out about things that are important to them through media,” Kenney stated in a release.

As part of her project, Kenney began conducting a survey — garnering more than 100 anonymous responses from girls about media and female representation — and she learned that 72%, regardless of their age or race, believe there is not enough diversity in the media, according to school officials. She then created a Google Classroom, which served as a hub, according to the news release, in which officials added that Kenney led Low Down sessions over Google Meet where she spoke with members virtually about females in the media and the importance representing female voices.

Kenney educated the girls on various types of media, taught them how to produce their own segment and provided professional tips and tricks, as well as helped them practice their public speaking skills and helped build their self-confidence, officials said.

Kenney, whose Google Classroom page holds three lesson plans with resources she created to allow anyone to recreate the Low Down sessions with their own groups, hopes her program inspires girls to find their own voices and explore a future in media, officials said.