Hoosick Falls Girl Scouts Kristin Bird, Somer Cook and Samantha Skott have each earned a Girl Scout Gold Award – an award that represents a girl’s accomplishments in scouting and in her community as she grows and works to improve her life and the lives of others.
The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest honor and award in Girl Scouting. It is a national award with national standards, awarded by individual councils on behalf of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Today, because of the hard work and dedication of girls like these, the tradition continues. The requirements of the Girl Scout Gold Award include the completion of several badges and books, 30 hours of leadership projects and 40 hours of career exploration. When that is finished,
they complete the 4B Challenge (become, belong, believe, build), which involves self-improvement, finding out about their community and its members and crafting a vision for change. The girls use the information to plan the Gold Award Project, which is designed to better their community. It takes 65-plus hours of preparation, planning and work to accomplish.
For this Gold project, the girls presented the idea of educating the community about “going green” in Hoosick Falls.
They began by educating younger girls at the Hoosick Falls Girl Scout Day Camp held at Hoosac School in August 2009. The campers performed experiments, made crafts and listened to speakers to learn how to live green. Experiments showed the effects that pollution and waste can have on a community. The children learned that instead of throwing away things they could transform them into great crafts. The speakers were adults that work with nature and practice recycling as part of their lives. They taught the girls how to clean with vinegar, recycle junk into usable items in their homes and helped them make natural bug repellent. The girls also learned from the Dyken Pond speaker the effect pollution has on our natural resources. One evening the girls had a cookout using solar ovens and reusable mess kits to keep with the going-green theme. The week ended with a special program by Beatrice Green The Recycle Queen.
All girls left camp with a reusable bag filled with crafts, natural products, books from a book swap and knowledge about going green. The girls also collected enough used books so that each student entering kindergarten at Hoosick Falls Central School could have a book. Shoes were also collected to be sent to needy children in Nicaragua. In addition, the girls held a community education day at the ERC Community Warehouse. Through crafts, games and demonstrations they taught the community about going green.
Kristin is the daughter of Seth and Tammy Bird of Hoosick Falls. Somer is the daughter of Chad Cook and Cindy Niquette of North Hoosick, and Samantha is the daughter of Don and Betsy Skott of Buskirk. The girls have been scouts since kindergarten or first grade and are currently in the eleventh grade at HFCS, where they are all honor students.
These three girls enjoy scouting because, “Girl Scouts has given us the opportunity to be involved in the community while making friends and having fun. It allows us to have unique experiences we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
The girls will be awarded their Gold pins at a celebration on April 17, at the Hoosick Falls firehouse.