A BRONZE AWARD
The members of fifth grade Junior Girl Scout Troop 2022 recently earned their Bronze Award. Following Girl Scouts USA's (GSUSA) guidelines for the Bronze Award, the girls looked for a project that would be of benefit to the community and have a lasting effect.
To achieve the bronze award, the girls first had to complete a Journey Award. The girls chose the 'Agent of Change' Journey. As part of their Journey, each girl recognized a heroine and learned about contributions to society made by the woman they chose. The Troop also talked about working as a team to complete a large project and assessed needs in the community. Throughout the year, the Troop worked on the community outreach portion of the award by completing numerous service endeavors. These included making cat toys for Animal Lifeline, tying fleece blankets and creating cheerful and uplifting pictures for patients at St. Mary Medical Center, chalking the walk at Doyle Elementary School for International Walk to School Day, caroling at Pine Run Retirement Community (assisted living), assembling Christmas gift bags for the Marines, creating Boo-Boo Bunnies for the Baby Bundles project to benefit Child, Home and Community and trash pick-up at Lenape Middle School in Doylestown.
In January, the girls began talking in earnest about their Bronze Award project and started observing their community to come up with project ideas. During Troop meetings, the girls and their leader talked a lot about team work: What makes a team player? What happens when we don't all agree? How do differences equal opportunities? Using role-play as a vehicle, they worked through some real-life scenarios evoking the positive attributes of a team player such as good listening skills, being polite, accepting differences and ultimately becoming more understanding of one another.
In March, the girls voted for their top three project choices. By the end of the month, it was decided: everyone in the troop wanted to help save Kids Castle.
At that point, the troop leader, Linda Miller, made contact with Save Kids Castle's Children's Committee coordinator who put the troop in contact with Jacqueline Devlin, Arts and Beautification Committee coordinator and Rosemary Huether, logistics advisor. Rosemary came to the troop meeting in April and spoke with the girls about the needs of the project. The girls were eager to help. They listened and, with Mrs. Devlin's guidance, an idea was formulated.
The project needed a welcome sign. The sign needed to reintroduce the castle mascot. The girls had carte blanche—was "Devlin" a boy or a girl? Why had he or she been away for so long? How was she or he feeling about coming out after all these years? The wheels of creativity began to turn.
Another aspect of the project was how to transfer the artist rendering of Devlin to 11x 18 signs that would ultimately be hung up around the castle. Making use of the website, freecycle.org, Mrs. Miller secured an overhead projector. Meetings turned creative as the girls worked to trace Devlin's image onto wooden boards that they had primed at an earlier meeting. Next the fun part. The girls got to choose from many different color schemes, to make Devlin come to life. It was around this time, the determination was made that Devlin was indeed a female dragon! Work on the poem and the painting continued.
The other portion of the project was to obtain estimates for the welcome sign. Again, using role play, the girls and their leader talked through what to say when calling for an estimate. They discussed the benefits of getting multiple estimates as well as how to arrange for follow up once the initial call was completed. One of the girls in the troop knew her neighbor had a sign company, Brauns Inc., so she contacted him. Eventually, this contact proved to be a match for the project. Mr. Steve Brauns and his wife, Lynn, attended a recent troop meeting and divulged the mockup for the sign. The girls provided more input including alternatives to color and size. They decided to change the original Devlin color to a scheme they felt better reflected how Devlin looked in their eyes. During this meeting, Mr. Brauns announced his generous donation of the sign to the Save Kids Castle project. We can't thank Brauns, Inc. enough for making the girls' dreams come true. In addition, the girls in Troop 2022 used some of their cookie earnings to make a monetary donation to Save Kids Castle.
This project was one that included a lot of hard work by every girl in the troop. The girls got a good sense of their abilities in art, writing and communication. Mrs. Miller and the members of Troop 2022 are thankful they had the opportunity to work with the amazingly supportive and dedicated people involved with the Save Kids Castle project and that they were indeed able to Help Save Kids Castle!
