GIRL SCOUTS HONORED
WITH THE COVETED “GOLD AWARD,” THE HIGHEST AWARD A GIRL IN SCOUTING CAN EARN!
 

For a slideshow of the Gold Award Recipients receiving their awards at the luncheon, click here.

Cleveland, OH – The Girl Scouts of Lake Erie Council (GSLEC) awarded 14 Girl Scouts from Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties with the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor a girl in Scouting can achieve. GSLEC’s 25th Annual Gold Award recognition reception was held at Windows on the River in the Bridge View Room in Cleveland, Ohio on Thursday, June 21, 2007.

In addition to the Gold Award, proclamations and congratulatory correspondence are received by each honoree from the White House and their respective senators, congressmen, mayors, councilmen, clergymen and school officials.

“Gold Award recipients have spent an average of 10 years in Girl Scouting. Earning this Award demands a great deal of commitment and time, an element critical at these young women’s ages when the competition of many other interests in today’s world can easily take precedence.” said GSLEC’s Chief Executive Officer, Cheryl Goggans. She further explained, “A Gold Award is an example of each girl’s commitment to excellence, dedication to serve her community and the desire to be an outstanding citizen.”

In order to achieve Gold Award status, a Girl Scout must first:

• Earn four project patches related to her Gold Award project.
• Earn the Career Exploration Pin by learning job skills that bring career aspirations and community needs together to make a positive difference.
• Complete 30 hours of service in a leadership capacity in her community, school or troop.
• Demonstrate her ability to bring together the skills learned in the first three activities to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

After completing the first four steps, a girl then plans and implements her project with the approval of the Girl Scouts’ Gold Award Committee and under the guidance of her mentor. The Gold Award project must benefit the community, build on the girl’s previous experience and take a minimum of 65 hours to complete.

The achievement of a Gold Award is also a prestigious addition to a college application, scholarship request, Armed Services application and/or resume.

Honorees at GSLEC’s 25th Annual Gold Award Recognition event are: Colleen Begley – Brecksville/Broadview Heights High School Class of 2008 (Broadview Heights, Ohio); Corin Bonnett – Bay High School Class of 2007 (Bay Village, OH); Lauren Chlanda – Brecksville/Broadview Heights High School Class of 2008 (Brecksville, OH); Meredith Davidson – Kenston Local School Class of 2007 (Chagrin Falls, OH); Amanda Ehrman – Magnificat High School Class of 2008 (Rocky River, OH); Amy Gardner – Cornerstone Christian Academy Class of 2006 (Chardon, OH); Meghan Davies Joyce – Bay High School Class of 2007 (Bay Village, OH); Phoebe Koelsch – Beaumont School Class of 2008 (Wickliffe, OH); Janet Ondrake – Gilmour Academy Class of 2006 (Richmond Heights, OH); Ashley Pace – Brecksville/Broadview Heights High School Class of 2007 (Brecksville, OH); Rachel Pekarik – Brecksville/Broadview Heights High School Class of 2007 (Brecksville, OH); Janean Rundo – Notre Dame Cathedral Latin Class of 2006 (Chesterland, OH); Emily Szoka – Kenston High School Class of 2006 (Chagrin Falls, OH) and Alaina Taylor – John Hay Early College High School Class of 2007 (Bay Village, OH).

President and Chair of GSLEC’s Board, Elizabeth Nosse stated, “Our Girl Scout honorees regularly volunteer; have paying jobs; are involved in one or more extra-curricular activity; maintain above-average grades and are pursuing college degrees. We salute these remarkable young women for their efforts and fortitude.”

Since its inception in 1912, Girl Scouts programs are continuously updated and designed to keep up with the changing times of the world and its societies. They enhance the development of strong social and communication skills; the ability to focus on issues that are not only important to the individual but also others in the community and enthusiastically encourage the exploration of potential career choices – all areas that have helped to develop girls, from six years of age to 17, into admirable role models that become confident, ambitious and respectful citizens.

Corporate and business sponsors of this year’s GSLEC Girl Scout Gold Award recognition event include: Aflac; AllianceBernstein; Cleveland Cavaliers; Cleveland Grand Prix; Cleveland Indians; Cohen & Company; Lake Erie Monsters; Neighborhood Family Practice; New Design Salon; Playhouse Square Foundation; Spero-Smith Investment Advisers and The Quickens Loan Arena.

As one of the oldest organizations for girls and women in the United States, the Girl Scouts of Lake Erie Council plays an essential role in helping girls reach their full potential in a rapidly changing world. Citizenship and international aspects of Girl Scouts programs provide girls with an understanding of people’s similarities and differences, endowing them with an appreciation and respect for others and enhancement of self-respect to move confidently into their futures. The Girl Scouts of Lake Erie Council serves 14,500 girls and 5,000 adults in Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties, and remains dedicated to implementing programs that build girls of courage, confidence and character who will strive to make the world a better place.
 

2007 GIRL SCOUT GOLD AWARD PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

Colleen Begley — (Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School Class of 2008) Colleen’s experience during a  hospital stay prompted her to find a way to use her Gold Award project to help other children who faced a similar situation.  She chose Child Life at MetroHealth Medical Center and,  after interviewing the head of the Center, developed her Healthy Helping Hands Gold Award project. Having learned that many of the pediatric  patients and their families were economically less fortunate than her, and that their foremost needs were basic education in personal hygiene, parental participation and preventative medicine, Colleen developed her project to include two phases.   The first: create a take-home hygiene packet, complete with combs, toothbrushes, toothpaste, thermometers, shampoo and soap.  To accomplish this, she held badge-a-ramas, events and activities with her fellow Girl Scouts to collect donated supplies.  In addition, she created an educational pamphlet that explained the use and importance of each item in the packet in maintaining good health.  The second phase: collect as many children’s books as she could, as she had also discovered that many of the families could not afford to have books at home to read to their children. She held book drives through her church, neighborhoods and with fellow Girl Scouts in order that each pediatric patient could take books home to keep.  Upon completion of her project, Colleen was able to provide 133 toiletry bags, over 717 books and 170 videos to MetroHealth Medical Center’s Child Life pediatric patients and parents.  Colleen plans a career in creative writing with a desire to work for a national magazine.

Lauren Chlanda — (Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School  Class of 2008) Lauren’s Gold Award project, Summertime in the City, addressed the lack of activities available to inner-city children who attend a federally-subsidized summer lunch program at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in East Cleveland. As these children do not have the resources to attend organized summer activities that involve a fee, Lauren provided a free program that would combine structured creative and educational activities to augment the programs before and after lunch. Part of her goal was  to improve the children's confidence in trying new things, develop better conversational skills among their peers, and build confidence, courage and self-esteem.  She began by enlisting volunteers, including her mother, fellow Girl Scouts and friends.  She also solicited donations from her fellow parishioners at St. Basil’s Church for craft supplies, stuffed animals and books, along with  materials from troops in her Service Unit.  In July, 2006, Lauren and her volunteers entertained 25 children each Thursday with a myriad of fun-filled activities that included board games (which the children could take home each day), jewelry making, painting, crafts, decorating cupcakes, cookies and making strawberry shortcake.  She discovered that she was not only providing the children a chance to partake in activities that enhanced their learning, she was also providing their parents with the knowledge that they were leaving their children at a secure place where they would experience a lot of creative and educational playtime. 

Meredith Rose Davidson — (Kenston High School Class of 2007)  and  Emily Skoza (Kenston High School Class of 2006)  Meredith and Emily partnered to develop a two-phase Gold Award project that would benefit both the youth and adults who reside at Hattie Larlham, a facility that houses severely physically and mentally disabled individuals ages four to 60.  For Meredith’s portion of her and Emily’s Helping Hands For Those in Need project, she assisted  the Larlham teachers in their new ‘electronics-school’. As the majority of children are non-verbal and wheelchair mobilized, Meredith designed and constructed two felt board activity centers, each 6’ tall by 4’ wide’, with casters so they could easily be moved from classroom to classroom.  Each board has shelves with 16 bins that hold educational objects and shapes that follow different themes (holidays, letters, numbers, etc.).  The teachers use them while teaching the residents and the students use them to make the lessons tangible and easier to learn.   Meredith created objects and shapes 3” wide by 5” tall for the children to hold and be able to be a part of the experience.    To assist in making her project continues, she drafted a letter and a “how to”  guide for the creating the objects for the activity centers.  She also provided it to her Service Unit with the hope that other Girl Scout troops will continue to make new shapes to replace worn or damaged ones in the years to come.  Meredith’s college choice is Ohio State University where she will major in engineering. 

Emily Skoza’s contribution to Helping Hands For Those in Need was two-fold.  Upon discovering the older Larlham residents did not have opportunities to enjoy festive activities such as parties or dances, she enlisted her fellow Girl Scouts to help make decorations and create a fun-filled atmosphere for a dance. Through Kenston High School’s NHS program, she was able to enlist enough volunteers to offer a one-on-one friend for each Larlham resident attending the dance.  Prior to the dance, she and her volunteers also applied the makeup and styled hair for the female residents.  Through the second phase of  Emily’s project, she established a pen pal system which connects the Larlham residents with people around the country.  Not only does she believe this opens opportunities for the residents to form bonds with the outside world they otherwise would not experience, it also serves to educate people about Hattie Larlham and expand its community.  In 2005, Hattie Larlham awarded Meredith and Emily its “Award For Service” for their outstanding contributions.

Amanda Ehrman (Magnificat High School Class of 2007)  and Alaina Taylor (John Hay Early College High School Class of 2007) partnered in their Get in the K.N.O.W. (Kids New Observation of the World) Gold Award project.  In order to share their passion for science, they provided  two-days of hands-on, fun-filled science experiments and enrichment activities for inner-city children, based on preserving the environment.  Set in three different science categories, 1st to 8th graders were introduced to “It’s Alive”, all about living things around you; “Air”, all the things air does and how wind can be used as power, and “Down to Earth”, presenting the science that surrounds us every day.  A  presentation was also given to the community at a spaghetti dinner, complete with an experiment display, at St. Rocco’s Parish Center on Cleveland’s west side.  The community benefited from this project as they were exposed, some for the first time, to Girl Scout experiences, and the children learned something new and exciting for the beginning of the next school year.  Amanda Ehrman will study abroad this summer.  Alaina Taylor will attend Ohio State University and study chemistry and psychology .

Amy Janice Gardner — (Cornerstone Christian Academy Class of 2006)  For some time now, the members of Amy’s Church, Chesterland Baptist, have had a difficult time reading the words to their worship hymns due to an outdated overhead projector presentation.  Amy presented her Pastor with her Gold Award project idea, A New Vision, wherein she would not only install PowerPoint software in the Church computers for the music team, but also create a program in which the worship music could be seen by all parishioners on a larger screen, making the words to the hymns clearer and easier to read.  Additionally, her project also included teaching PowerPoint seminars to the parishioners, young and older, so they could be part of the on-going process and take what they learned home to teach PowerPoint to other family members.   She also engaged the help of fellow Girl Scouts and youth group members to type seven binders of all the songs the church has on file, indexed them and put everything into a user-friendly manual.  Amy is attending Geneva College and is majoring in Secondary English Education.

Meghan Davies Joyce — (Bay High School Class of 2007)  It comes as no surprise that Meghan would create a Gold Award project that is themed around music.  Upon learning that Meghan plays the piano, the trumpet, writes music, was involved in the marching band and concert band at school, and sings in not one, but four choirs, one begins to understand the depth of  her passion.  To share her love of music, Meghan developed and implemented Musical Instruments for the Young, a program that provides a variety of rhythm instruments for pre-school/kindergarten children of need at Calvary Reformed Church in Cleveland, Ohio.  Under the guidance of Richard Fortney, Founder & Executive Director of TrueNorth Cultural Arts, Meghan recorded her own CD of her favorite Christian worship songs to generate funds to purchase the instruments.  Her technical adviser, voice and piano teacher, along with fellow Girl Scouts, helped research the music.  She also consulted marketing experts in her community to develop strategies for promotion of the CD.  Calvary Reformed Church is very grateful for Meghan’s program and also intends to share some of the instruments she provided with the children at the Mother Victoria Orphanage in Monrovia, Liberia.

Phoebe Koelsch — (Beaumont School Class of 2008)  Phoebe’s Gold Award project, A Visit to the Bottom of the Garden,  consisted of  two informative and fun-filled phases.  The first was an educational workshop on edible plants for over 300 children attending the Holden Arboretum’s 2006 Fall Fest. The agenda included a brief talk on the value of various plants and seed crafts which included bracelets, bean wreaths, seed flower plaques and pizza sauce gardens planted in egg cartons.  The second phase was  a guide book Phoebe wrote containing  information she garnered from her research on the value of edible plants.  It explains how to grow and care for this category, the importance of protecting the plant world and how to use it wisely.  Nutritional value is an important part of her guidebook and contains commentary on three gardens from the past (Medieval, Colonial and Victorian). She also included activities and recipes.  School teachers and youth-program directors will be able to use the guidebook as Phoebe also developed two lesson plans that can supplement their lessons and programs.  The first is for upper elementary school children on the Native American diet, incredible edibles, herbs and tending the garden.  The second is for primary grades and focuses on pumpkins.  The guidebook was presented to the Education Department and is now available in the Holden Arboretum library.  Phoebe plans to study international business in college.

Janet Ondrake — (Gilmour Academy Class of 2006)   Arts, Crafts and More, is more than what its name implies.   After discovering that the majority of inner-city children attending the Merrick House West’s drop off center do not have the economic means to purchase art or craft kits, Janet designed her project to show children how they could make cool, fun things that highlight their personality and creativity without  expensive craft kits.  Specifically, she designed her program to show the  children how they could use their imaginations in using recycled or used objects  from home to make new things.   She began by holding a crayon drive at school asking for new, used or old crayons, and solicited churches, individuals and organizations for donations of supplies (shaped pasta, beads, fabric, ribbon, glue, rubber bands, popsicle sticks,  elastic string, egg cartons and more).  From the materials donated,  she created craft kits  for each of the children, complete with patterns and instructions on how to make  ‘festive’ critters (egg carton caterpillars, beaded geckos and more) .  While crafts were drying,  Janet taught them songs and games.  To their delight, each child was encouraged to take their craft kits home and continue to create.   The project was so well received that Janet assembled kits for future use that both the Merrick House’s summer camp and after school groups could continue to use.   After witnessing the joy the children experienced during her program, Janet said,  “I’ve learned that life comes with a lot of challenges, and even when they seem overwhelming and impossible, all one has to do is stick with it, ask for help, and the problems can be solved.”  Janet is attending Ohio Northern University where she is majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a Biomedical specialization.

Ashley Pace  — (Brecksville Broadview Heights High School Class of 2007)  Ashley’s Project Gold—A Reading Camp was held in June, 2006 every day for a week for three hours for Highland Elementary’s second graders.  Disappointment at  the State of Ohio’s recent cuts for funding Title I Programs (extra reading classes), and her long desire to become an elementary school teacher, were Ashley’s driving forces behind this project.  First, she held a parents’ meeting  to introduce and describe the project, then developed organized reading and writing lesson plans designed to enhance students’ interest, researched books for the appropriate grade level, and provided take-home materials for the students’ parents.  After learning of her project, Mail Hub, Tops,  Giant Eagle and Brecksville United Methodist Church donated snacks and materials.  Her program was so successful, there is talk about continuing the Reading Camp throughout years to come.  At the conclusion of her project Ashley emphasized, “Many students that have been positively influenced by their teachers go on to do wonderful things in life and leave a small fingerprint on the soul of a person that can last a lifetime.” 

Rachel Pekarik — (Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School Class of 2007)    After a devastating fire destroyed a fifth-grade classroom, materials and supplies at St. John Nepomucene School, Rachel created her Gold Award project, Books for the Brain, to help replenish books, help the students get back on track, and generate excitement about the importance of reading.  In addition to a successful book drive, she also designed her program to include reading fun days at the school and started a reading buddy club where fifth-grade students are paired with third-grade students, and each pair takes turns reading aloud to the other.  The entire class then answered comprehension questions for a prize and received a completed reading log with questions about plots, characters and words  they did not recognize.  Due to the fire, Rachel felt it was also important to educate the children on fire hazards and safety. With invaluable input from her local Fire Department, she designed, wrote and published a pamphlet for each of the students to learn from and take home. It included tips on fire prevention, escape plans,  the importance of smoke detectors and special tips to parents.  Due to Rachel’s project, a tradition of the older children reading to the younger children has been established and will continue during recess once a month at the school.  Additionally, each year the new fifth graders will assume the position of being the readers to the younger third graders.  Rachel desires to attend Ohio State University.

Janean Rundo — (Notre Dame Cathedral Latin Class of 2006)  Janean’s concern that many senior centers in Geauga County are being shut down due to lack of maintenance, was the impetus for her Gold Award project, New Life  and Landscape to the West Geauga Senior Center Library.  Her goal was to create a desirable, organized place for the elderly to retreat, gather with friends, enjoy meals and have enough books to read and games to play — all with the objective to have the Center remain open for many years to come.  She began by holding book drives at local churches, and was able to collect close to 250 books and even dozens upon dozens of games to donate to the Center.  After alphabetizing, cataloging and organizing the books and games on their specific shelves,  the next area to tackle was the landscaping, as the exterior of the building needed to be more inviting.  Through the many volunteers she recruited, Girl Scouts and friends, Janean’s Gold Award project was so successful, the individuals at the West Geauga Senior Center hosted a party in her honor to thank her and her volunteers.