Community Corner

Winchester Girl Scouts Earn Gold Award

Five percent of Girl Scouts receive the Gold Award each year.

Only five percent of Girl Scouts earn their Gold Award each year and Winchester houses four of the recipients: Girl Scouts Sarah Craven, Mary Katherine Marino, Dilini Palamakumbura and Lucy Yang who received this highest level of achievement last week.

The Girl Scout Gold Award recognizes a service project that fulfills a need within a girl's community whether local or global, creates change, and becomes ongoing, according to a release from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. To earn the award, girls must complete the Silver Award and a minimum of 80 hours of service. Just five percent of all Girl Scouts earn this award each year. 

Craven’s project, Chesterbrook Learning Center Book Room, helped create a book room at the Chesterbook Learning Center and to promote literacy to children. Craven had read a study indicating that literacy and poverty are closely related, and she said she hopes that lending library will entice children to read for pleasure and ultimately aid them in choosing to seek higher education and better jobs. During the summer months when the center is closed, the book room will be staffed by a local volunteer, in her home. The book room will reopen in the center, come fall.

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Marino’s Plant a Seed Project taught inner-city children at a local, bilingual preschool how to garden. She worked with volunteers to teach the children how to start seedlings, transfer the plants, and harvest the produce. Marino also included fun, hands-on activities to teach the children about nutrition. She and her team included information on the positive effects local gardening can have on our environment. Students from the high school and teachers at the preschool will help to sustain the project.

Palamakumbura’s S.E.N.S.O.R.Y. Project (Servicing Early Intervention Needs in Sri Lanka Through Outreach, Record-Keeping and Youth Involvement) helped to create a sensory therapy room at the Matara Hospital in Sri Lanka. Palamakumbura researched the benefits of providing a sensory room for children with special needs. With the help of local organizations, she educated parents about sensory therapy, encouraging them to continue therapy at home and between doctor’s appointments. The room will be maintained and utilized by occupational therapists, doctors and volunteers in Sri Lanka.

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Yang’s project, Sanborn House History-for Kids, worked with members of the National Honor Society, local Girl Scouts and other volunteers to create accessible, kid-friendly learning materials to get the children of the to appreciate a piece of the town’s history. Yang and her team made a webpage with kid-friendly text about the history of the Sanborn House, including historical facts that the 3rd grade students will utilize during the school’s annual “Winchester History Travel Brochure” curriculum. The students also took a guided tour of the house and were able to participate in reenactments of the house’s history. The Historical Society and teachers will help maintain the program.

-Mary Katherine Marino is not pictured.


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