Girl Scout Cadettes Earn Their Silver Award

On Friday, December 1st, 2017, over 40 girls in our school and across Huntington had their Girl Scout Silver Award ceremony. This milestone is very important to these girls because it the highest award a girl scout can earn as a Cadette (the level at which the girls are currently in). It is also an achievement that showcases her talent as a dedicated leader that is determined to impact her community. According to Julia Desimone, one of the first parts of this process goes as follows,“You need a minimum of 50 [community service] hours for it. We also can only have one fundraiser, so you need a large budget. The Silver Award is earned when 1-4 girls raise money for a cause that must be sustainable. For example, buy a bathtub for a pet shelter.” Troop #327, which Julia and many other girls from her troop have been a part of since she was a Daisy (the group you start in as a kindergarten or first grade girl scout) was a garage sale, which was a kick start for their big Silver Award project. Each scout has the opportunity to choose a service project that benefits their community and they can choose to work on their own or with a small group (of three or four). In Troop #327, one of the small groups, consisting of Julia Desimone, Joanna Imburgia, Kyra Ramonetti and Amanda Voskinarian, worked on their project together. These girls refurbished a local food pantry, Mercy House, to make it neater and more functional. Amanda Voskinarian explained, “We painted the walls, organized both the lobby area and the food storage area, and put cabinets, benches and curtains in the main lobby. We chose this project because we knew how much the Mercy House has given to families in need, so we gave back to them as our thanks.” Not only did refurbishing Mercy House make it have a better working environment, it also made the girls feel proud of themselves for doing a big project that gave back to their community. Coming up with the idea for this task took a long time but the work paid off. Joanna Imburgia claimed, “It took a couple of months but it feels really good to know that we’re helping people.”