Top 5 kids: Facts about Girl Scouts

1. The first Girl Scout troop was started by Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912

2. Today, there are 3.2 million Girl Scouts (girls and adult leaders) in the United States

3. In Davis, 655 girls from kindergarten through high school are registered Girl Scouts

4. Famous American Girl Scouts include Lucille Ball, Madeleine Albright, Sheryl Crow, Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton

5. The first lady of the United States serves as honorary president of Girl Scouts USA

Source: http:www.girlscouts.org

It’s amazing what a single Girl Scout troop can do.

Consider the following:

Nine girls in Davis Troop 1217 spent 300 hours last year making the pediatric ward at Kaiser Permanente in Roseville a more comfortable place for children. Together, they made more than 40 fleece pillows, 350 bracelet bead kits, 75 tic tac toe kits and numerous origami kits.

They also collected or purchased more than 75 DVDs for the ward and supplied numerous coloring books and crayons.

And that was just the fifth-graders (now sixth-graders) in Troop 1217.

The eight older girls, all now in ninth grade, worked alone or in teams of two to build 10 owl boxes to provide habitat for barn owls; provide furniture for the Yolo Crisis Nursery; start a newspaper for fifth- and sixth-graders at Montgomery Elementary School; make 40 blankets for cats and kittens awaiting adoption at the Yolo County Animal Shelter; supply the transitional housing program at Davis Community Meals with seven bookcases full of books and board games; and make blankets and meals for the homeless.

For their efforts, the older girls earned their Silver Awards, while the nine younger girls earned their Bronze.

They all certainly deserved it, says troop leader Karen Ashby.

“I was so impressed with the amount of hours and the dedication of the girls,” she said. “The neat thing about the projects is how they touched so many lives, and will make such a difference.”

Touching lives and making a difference is something Girl Scouts all over Davis do every year through these projects. For the youngest girls, earning the Bronze Award requires at least 30 hours of work per girl and completing the project by the sixth grade. The Silver Award requires at least 50 hours of service and completion by the ninth grade.

The Gold Award, of course, is the pinnacle of Girls Scouts, comparable to the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Award, and requires a minimum of 80 hours of work to be completed by the end of high school.

All of the projects from Bronze to Gold are expected to leave a lasting impact on the community.

Last year, five Davis girls earned their Gold Awards, 17 their Silver Awards and many more their Bronze Awards (the Girl Scout Council only keeps track of gold and silver).

When focusing on their Bronze Award, Ashby said her Scouts, who would complete the project as a group, brainstormed ideas and voted for their favorite.

“It was a democratic process,” she noted.

The father of one Scout is a physician at Kaiser who helped facilitate the project they ultimately chose, which was helping children who were sick or injured. Serendipity played a part as well.

When the troop approached A Better Place to Bead in Davis asking for donations for the bead kits they wanted to assemble, they learned the shop had recently received a large donation of beads from the family of a woman who had died. It turned out the woman was a longtime Kaiser physician, and the store passed her beads along to the Girl Scouts, who in turn passed them back to patients at Kaiser in the form of individual bracelet kits.

“It was meant to be,” Ashby said.

In addition to creating many items, the girls did some outreach at the Davis Farmers Market and raised funds to purchase other items.

Meanwhile, most of the older girls applied for and received $75 grants from the Girl Scout Council to help fund their projects. Obtaining those grants required presenting a proposal to and being interviewed by council representatives.

Some girls also received funds from local residents and businesses.

In addition to A Better Place to Bead’s donation, for example, Scouts Emily Nazario and Emily Ginn built 10 owl boxes with help from biologist John McNerney and the city of Davis, and a donation from Coldwell Banker agent Jason Taormino.

“Davis is very supportive of these girls,” Ashby noted.

That positive interaction with the community is a big part of why Girl Scouts work on these awards, and in the case of Troop 1217, all of the girls have set their sights on the next level, be it silver or gold.

Members of Troop 1217 who earned their Bronze Awards are: Amanda Nazario, Anna Erichsen, Brooke Rubinstein, Grace Mariano, Lauren Giovanetti, Michiko Adams, Siena Dwyer, Sofia Dolan and Eleanor Richter.

Earning their Silver Awards were Emily Nazario and Emily Ginn for the owl boxes; Ashlyn Barbieri and Atalanti Pitsillides for making and donating furniture to the Yolo Crisis Nursery; Ankita Singh for starting a school newspaper for fifth- and sixth-graders at Montgomery Elementary School; Julia Morris for making 40 blankets for cats and kittens awaiting adoption at the Yolo County Animal Shelter; Livia Morris for making and donating seven bookcases full of books and games to the Davis Community Meals transitional housing program; and Tal Periard, who worked with a homeless shelter in Woodland, making blankets, cooking and organizing at the shelter.

For more information on Girl Scouts, visit the local unit’s website at http://groups.dcn.org/davisgirlscouts.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or (530) 747-8051.

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