Girl Scout troop honors Gold Award recipients

Girl Scout troop honors Gold Award recipients
Fairborn Daily Herald
September 19, 2012

Fairborn Girl Scout Troop 30463 is pleased to announce that all six of its Scouts have earned the Gold Award. Very few Girl Scouts ever receive the Gold Award, so to have all the girls in one Troop earn this award is an unusual feat.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest and most prestigious award in Girl Scouting. It symbolizes outstanding accomplishments in the areas of leadership, community service, career planning and personal development. The Girl Scout Gold Award is often compared to the Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts. Earning the Gold Award takes many hours of preparation, work and dedication.

First, these girls earned the Gold Leadership Award which required 30 hours of leadership work, as well as three badges and a focus book. Then they completed 40 hours of career exploration, including job shadowing and/or paid employment, to earn the Gold Career Award. After a Gold 4B Challenge, the girls each planned a Gold project to benefit their community. They had to get their projects approved, then put their plans into action. The Gold Award project requires a minimum of 65 hours of work in planning and completing the project. The girls are required to not only work themselves but to show leadership during their projects. They also have to fundraiser to pay for all their project’s materials. The Girl Scout Gold Award reflects these girls’ commitment to themselves, their community and to Girl Scouting.

Katelyn Lambalot and Mary Morrison, recent graduates of Fairborn High School, completed their Gold Awards in January 2012. Their project was called “Y-M-C-Play” and benefited the after-school program at the Fairborn YMCA. Their project focused on creating a game room with an increased selection of toys and games. Katelyn created a book of over 50 active play games to teach the importance of exercise to the students. She also taught them nutritional awareness and the importance of healthy eating habits. Mary held a toy drive, collecting donated games, then built a large wooden toy box in which to hold them. The toys, game booklet, and nutritional handouts all encourage a healthy lifestyle for the YMCA kids.

Barbara Kiddon and Jasmine Prince, Fairborn High School Seniors, recently completed their final Gold Award interviews and are now proud Gold Award recipients. Their project, “Find It, Read It, Share It!”, was completed at Fairborn St. Luke Lutheran Church’s Preschool library. Barbara built new bookshelves and decorated the library, made permanent shelf theme dividers, held a book drive and created a volunteer reading program. Jasmine, using a donated laptop, made a much-needed database for the thousands of books in the library. She spent many long data-entry hours creating and updating this library database so the teachers will know what books are available and can find them for use in their classrooms.
Caroline Tinsley and Kati Lare, Juniors at FHS, are also September 2012 Gold Award recipients. Their project, “A.B.C.” (Animal Biology Camp), was held at the Faith Community Methodist Church in Xenia. They created a week-long camp to help first through fourth graders learn about characteristics and habitats of different animal groups. After spending many hours researching information to create the camp, they used games, crafts and snacks to teach lessons to the children during the camp. The kids had so much fun, they forgot they were learning!

Girls can join Girl Scouts in Kindergarten as Daisy Scouts. Joyce Tinsley and Laura Kiddon started as Daisy Leaders and are happy to still be serving as Troop 30463’s Leaders. They are very proud to be Troop Leaders to this outstanding group of girls.