The Gold Award is the highest award that a girl can achieve in Girls Scouts and requires a significant time commitment for an 11th- or 12th-grader. More than 100 River Valleys Girl Scouts earned their Gold Award this year. Girls participating in the Gold and Silver Award programs in Girl Scouts River Valleys donated more than 30,000 hours to improving their communities through the projects.
Eight Maple Grove girls received gold awards this year. Here are the projects of two of them:
Rebecca Cohn
Nutrition for Athletes
Rebecca’s Gold Award project centered on promoting proper nutrition and activity involvement in today’s youth. She created and implemented a health and nutrition presentation for elementary students and implemented an athletic mentoring program between high school athletes and youth teams to encourage long-term health habits. With her project, Rebecca helped double the number of mentors and student coaches involved with youth teams and provided children with life-long nutritional knowledge. Her project will be sustained by her local high school hockey booster club.
Katherine Weinstock
Bat Awareness, Education, and Homebuilding in My Community
For her Gold Award project, Katie focused on the global and local decrease in bat populations caused by deforestation and loss of habitat, as well as a general misunderstanding and fear of the creatures. Katie educated people in the community about the importance of bats and taught them how to build bat houses. She partnered with the Maple Grove Community Center, Fernbrook Elementary School, and Three Rivers Park District to deliver educational materials that she created to kids, families, and volunteers so that they can continue to spread awareness about the issue and work to address it. Other Gold Award-winners were Jenna Begin, Jonelise Burdick-Levang, Kate Dahl, Gretchen Dillon, Allison Scudder and Alicia Wilson.
