160 Boy Scouts Recognized at the Annual Eastern Pennsylvania Girl Scout Award Ceremony

PHILADELPHIA – The Eastern Pennsylvania Girl Scouts have announced that 160 girls from across the 9-nation district have received the prestigious Silver Scout Award – the highest achievement for the Scout Cadet (Grades 6-8) – in 2021.

On Thursday, May 12, a personal ceremony was held to honor these scouts. Kim E. Freits-Doe, CEO of GSEP, shared remarks and honored the girls with this prestigious award with board members, Scout volunteers, family and friends also present. Former Philadelphia poet laureate and scout Sidney Brown was the keynote speaker.

The Girl Scout Silver Award is the highest award a cadet scout can receive, and is the culmination of a girl’s demonstration of leadership skills, time management, creativity, initiative and significant mastery of skills. The Silver Award-winning Girl Scouts choose Take Action projects, individually identifying a community problem, developing a plan to address it, recruiting a team to help, and creating sustainable solutions that exist for years after their project. These projects require a minimum of 50 hours of maintenance.

Girl Scouts 160 Take Action projects include creating reusable and washable sanitary napkins for women, creating gardens for meditation, creating a free children’s library to access literature, and creating podcasts from, for, and for the LGBTQ + community. Together, this year’s Girl Scouts, who presented the Silver Award, spent more than 9,700 hours in community service. Based on the latest estimate of the cost of one-hour volunteer services ($ 28.54), this is more than $ 278,636 in a community investment investment for the nine counties served by GSEP.

Among the service projects were:

• Caitlin H., Girl Scout of Montgomery County, Squad 7287, Swallow of the Trees Project. “For my project, I made bird boxes with swallows for the local watershed, which needed bird boxes. These bird boxes have allowed the birds to have a safe home to start a family. ”

• Natalie K., Montgomery County Girl Scout, Squad 7009: Welcome Place. “My team and I have improved the Blue Bell Elementary nature trail. I planted 3 different gardens along the entire trail, 2 at the entrance and a shady garden near the educational area we created. ”

• Sophia L., Girl Scout of Montgomery County, Squad 7343: Puppy Bags. I made bags for puppies, including ideas for enrichment to keep your dog busy, treats in a roll of toilet paper rolled up in newspaper to tear the dog to pieces, and a bandana labeled “I was adopted from the PSPCA” and a paw print on come back to help puppies and dogs adopt from the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals! ”

“We are very excited to honor these 160 extraordinary Girl Scouts. In a year of extreme change and uncertainty, they believed in their power to have a lasting impact on their communities today, ”said Kim E. Freits-Doe, chief executive officer of Eastern Pennsylvania Scouts. “We welcome and honor the courage, confidence and character of the girls, as well as their commitment to making the world a better place. They have shown us what true leadership is, and we look forward to welcoming them to an elite community of Girl Scouts and wonderful women who share the same commitment to building a better world together. ”