Troop Confers Three Gold Awards In Girls’ Scouting

To earn the Gold Award, scouting’s highest award for girls, senior scouts must spend 80 hours making a sustainable, meaningful change, and have completed the prerequisite Silver Award (for girls in sixth through eighth grades) and Ambassador Journey activities focused on leadership, STEM and advocacy.

Three girls from Troop 10346, all 2026 Severna Park High School graduates who started their scouting journey together in kindergarten at Oak Hill Elementary School, recently earned the Gold Award together.

For her Gold Award project, avid reader Kate Edwards built @thestationsp Little Library to combat illiteracy. Isabella Elliott created and installed bat boxes for “Bats for Biodiversity: The Bat Box Project” to promote bats over pesticides. Allyson Jones’ project, “Keep Track of Your Back: Scoliosis Awareness and Accessibility to Screening,” was an awareness campaign highlighting the importance of early scoliosis screening.

Edwards first saw a Little Library while visiting relatives in New York. After she learned that over 60% of Maryland fourth-graders may not read at a proficient level, she knew she wanted her Gold Award project to be a community library.

Located at The Station in Severna Park, along the B&A Trail, the spot is ideal because it offers an outdoor children’s play area with plenty of seating. The Little Library features a bulletin board for business cards and event flyers and is self-sustaining since people are welcome to take books and leave books.

Edwards will keep an eye on the library when she comes home from the University of Maryland, College Park where she will study operations management and business analytics at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. If attention is needed in the meantime, owners of the small businesses nearby will attend the library.

“Over 13 years in scouting I learned leadership, teamwork, goal setting, problem solving and other valuable lessons that ultimately allowed me to turn my passions into meaningful change,” Edwards shared. “I had so much fun scouting with my friends and (making) memories together and am forever grateful for the opportunities scouting provided us.”

For Elliott, “Bats for Biodiversity: The Bat Box Project,” was a natural progression from her Girl Scout Silver Award, which outlined the importance of pollinators and native plants.

“I created my project to support pollinators and our ecosystem, raise awareness about the toxicity of widespread pesticide use to our local and greater ecosystem, and to support our declining bat population as an alternate solution to widespread pesticide use,” Elliott explained. “Bats are a natural solution. They are exterminators of mosquitoes and invasive insect pests, decreasing the need for insecticide use. Bats are unsung heroes of the ecosystem!”

Her bat box project highlighted the benefits of bats and bat boxes as a natural, non-toxic solution. First, she created an educational campaign about the benefits of bats and bat boxes as a natural alternative to widespread pesticide usage. Elliott presented her research at homeowners association meetings, ultimately building and installing bat boxes in Severna Park and the Brittingham neighborhood in Millersville. The cedar bat boxes were funded by communities, and Elliott taught residents how to maintain them. She also taught younger scouts how to build their own boxes.

“The most important thing I have learned from my Gold Award is that one person can have an idea and start a movement to create change for the greater good,” Elliott said. “That, in my opinion, exemplifies the Girl Scout Promise.”

Elliott is attending Florida Institute of Technology to study mechanical engineering and play lacrosse.

As a young teen, Jones was diagnosed with severe adolescent idiopathic scoliosis and wanted to create and work on a project that raised awareness for early screening and prevention.

“Lack of scoliosis awareness and screening led to my late diagnosis of scoliosis,” Jones said. “I have learned that if youth are frequently screened for scoliosis, there is a small chance of scoliosis going unnoticed, and screening helps promote early detection in youth who do develop it. Early detection increases the likelihood of receiving noninvasive treatment methods.”

Jones lobbied Anne Arundel County Public Schools’ health department and government offices about the need to increase awareness and provide screening in schools. She launched a social media campaign to share scoliosis facts, garnering more than 2 million views in June, Scoliosis Awareness Month.

“I wanted to prevent the repetition of my story in other adolescents,” she said, noting that limited treatment options are available for late diagnosis, which may include spinal fusion surgery. “Roughly 2-3% of the population will develop scoliosis. With early detection, minimally invasive treatment options may include physical therapy or bracing.”

Jones is attending Texas A&M University to study education.

“I’m proud of all three girls for pursuing and accomplishing their goal. Only 5% of eligible Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award,” said Laurie Edwards, troop leader. “I’ve loved watching the girls grow into confident, strong women while trying new experiences and learning to handle challenges.”

Elliott feels that her scouting experiences have been invaluable.

“I am so grateful that Kate, Ally and I have been on this incredible journey together that started in kindergarten,” she highlighted. “That equals 13 years of shared experience: crafting, camping, volunteering, building, collaborating, creating, planning, laughing, crying, traveling, learning, growing as people, and making the world a better place. I know that Ally and Kate, and all the scouts from my troop, are going to go on to do amazing things.”