It’s been more than a decade since a Harvard Girl Scout has earned the Gold Award, the highest achievement in scouting. This year, three of them have accomplished it.
The Gold Award will be given to senior Girl Scouts Kara Kennedy, Alyssa Johnson, and Janet Sorrells on June 16 in an award ceremony to be held at the Chez Jose banquet facility in Agawam, Mass.
“When you reach the status of a Gold Award recipient, you have something to be proud of,” said Dana Carnegie, spokesperson for the Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts.
Janice Kennedy, the girls’ troop leader since kindergarten, has watched the girls grow from Daisies, just starting out as Girl Scouts, to Gold Award recipients.
“They have developed great leadership skills and find so many ways to use their talents,” Kennedy said.
The last time a Harvard Girl Scout earned a Gold Award was in 2000.
“This is a very prestigious award,” Carnegie said. “These girls who have earned the Gold Award set remarkable examples of what Girl Scouts can achieve.”
This year, 23 Girl Scouts in the division have earned the award for their work on a project centered on a community issue about which they care deeply. A Gold Award recipient generally spends a minimum of 80 hours finding an issue she would like to create a project around, researching the issue and building a team to help, formulating a plan of action, presenting the plan to the Gold Award council, receiving and using feedback from council members and others, and finally putting her plan into action.
Prior to beginning her work toward a Gold Award, each Girl Scout must complete either two leadership journeys as a part of her troop or one leadership journey and have earned one Silver Award, which is the highest award that can be earned by a Girl Scout Cadette (sixth through eighth grade). The latter set of prerequisites was the route Johnson, Kennedy, and Sorrells chose. The trio completed their required journey and earned their Silver Awards together.
Journey to Gold
The idea for the project that earned them their Silver Awards came from an unfortunate bike accident on Cape Cod one summer.
“Janet crashed her bike into a building, breaking seven bones and getting 20 stitches,” Johnson said.
The accident inspired the girls, who have been friends and in the same troop since they were in kindergarten, to develop a project on bike safety, which involved creating pamphlets and educating others on the components of bike safety at the annual Harvard Fall Festival.
“We had demonstrations on the importance of helmets and how they protect your head,” Johnson said.
In collaboration with their seven-member troop, Johnson, Kennedy, and Sorrells took part in a “take action” journey called “Sow What.” This journey involved learning about the production of food and the methods of providing sustainable food sources for people everywhere. In partnership with the Growing Places Garden Project in Clinton, the girls became part of a garden installation crew, installing planting frames at low-income housing developments and preparing the frames for gardens that would allow the residents to sustainably grow their own produce at home.
Once their preliminary requirements were fulfilled, the girls could begin to consider what issues they might like to take action on.
“My issue was environmental conservation and awareness,” Johnson said. “I’ve always loved the outdoors, hiking, and camping, so I knew I wanted to do something involving the outdoors.”
The Nashua River Watershed Association was in the process of redoing its entire website when Johnson had her idea to create a page on the site dedicated to informing visitors of the many outdoor recreation areas within the northern central Massachusetts and southern central New Hampshire areas.
“I wanted to make people more aware of taking advantage of outdoor resources,” Johnson said.
Before beginning work on the site, Johnson wrote up a five-page proposal on her project idea and sent it to the Girl Scouts Gold Award committee for approval and later went before the committee in Worcester to present the project in person. Each Girl Scout seeking the award must do the same.
“They hate food drives,” Johnson said of the committee. “They want [a Gold Award recipient] to do something that’s going to go beyond and address the root of a problem.”
After approval, Johnson began her work compiling information on all the recreation areas in the 32 towns and cities the Nashua River Watershed encompasses. Johnson’s project advisor, Wynne Treanor Kvenvold, the communications manager at the Watershed Association, offered advice and insight on how to build the site.
As part of the publicity outreach portion of her project, Johnson is planning a walk through one of the recreation areas she researched, the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge, with one of the younger Girl Scout troops, as well as an online scavenger hunt for them.
“I would like my project to be a community resource,” Johnson said. “I want to inspire younger children to get outdoors.”
‘Knit Wits’
The issue Sorrells chose to delve into came to her from a newspaper article she read during the summer of 2011 about kids using the Harvard Public Library as a hang out spot instead of a place to learn and be productive.
“I have been volunteering at the library since seventh grade and I love it there, so before I even met with the council, I met with the youth librarians and told them I wanted to run programs at the library for kids,” Sorrells said.
Together, Sorrells and the librarians came up with four knitting programs called “Knit Wits” that ran one Monday per month, three snack-craft programs that centered on making holiday-themed snacks, and one Valentine’s Day craft program.
“The librarians were so helpful and enthusiastic about my programs,” Sorrells said. “They were my advisors.”
In order to raise money for the crafts and knitting supplies needed for her programs, Sorrells partnered with Kennedy and Johnson, who were also raising money for their Gold Award projects, to hold a bake sale at the transfer station.
As part of her publicity outreach portion, Sorrells created an online survey for the library website regarding the opinions of visitors on what they would like to see on a “teen page” for the site. The survey helped the librarians decide on a calendar, homework help, and book review sections for the page.
“I hope I educated and inspired the children who attended my programs,” Sorrells said.
‘Kids Can Quilt’
Kara Kennedy’s “Kids Can Quilt” programs, which she ran over February vacation this winter, earned her a Gold Award doing something she already loved and helping kids do something feels is important.
Gold Award Girl Scout Kara Kennedy gives instruction during her “Kids Can Quilt” program that she ran in February. From left: Meenu Ramakrishnan, Emily Douglas, Kara Kennedy (standing), and Fiona Morrison. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
“I’ve done a lot of sewing, and I figured I would do something crafty,” Kennedy said. “I used to sew my own dresses, and a lot of kids aren’t learning how to sew, so I decided this would be a good way to get people inspired to make something for themselves.”
Before pitching her idea to the council, Kennedy spoke with her soon-to-be project advisor, Judy Cavanaugh, the community education coordinator at the Hildreth Elementary School, to see if there would be any interest in a knitting program. Cavanaugh, who is a master quilter, was the one who inspired Kennedy to get into quilting when she was in fourth grade.
“It worked out so nicely that she could help me in so many parts of my project,” Kennedy said. “She helped me a lot with setting up the classroom space, getting approval from the superintendent, figuring the logistics of getting the word out to the kids, and she even let me borrow her quilting frame for the Loaves and Fishes quilt.”
When Cavanaugh replied that there had been a proposal by a Hildreth teacher for a class on making stuffed animals, Kennedy began planning her “Kids Can Quilt” program. For two hours a day over the course of the February vacation, eight students came to the program and learned how to sew. They each had their own projects that they worked on throughout the week once they got the basic techniques down.
The second part of Kennedy’s project, which consumed at least 60 hours of the total 112 hours she logged throughout, was the design and creation of a large quilted wall hanging for the Loaves and Fishes food pantry in Devens. Kennedy’s troop has volunteered with Loaves and Fishes for several years and has seen the impact the food pantry has had on many families in need.
“I did it [the quilt] to connect with the Loaves and Fishes theme, which is neighbors helping neighbors,” Kennedy said.
