Tag Archives: Bronze Award Girl Scouts

Troop 35 earns Bronze Award

Submitted by Nikki Milton

Metro Denver

Aurora

Troop 35 was in the middle of their Bronze Award project when the pandemic hit, putting everything on hold. We are happy to say that we were able to finish the project, a year later, and the results are amazing. Our troop picked The Delores Project, which provides safe, comfortable shelter and services for unaccompanied women and transgender individuals experiencing homelessness. They asked us for help on two fronts, build shelving for their pantry and create an outdoor garden of herbs and vegetables they could use in their kitchen. Our troop of 18 split into two groups and tackled both projects. The residents couldn’t stop asking us questions and expressing their gratitude for our work. It was a great experience for the girls and we are looking forward to starting our Silver Award project next year.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

2021 Virtual Highest Awards Celebrations: Watch Now

Thank you to everyone who joined Girl Scouts of Colorado on Sunday, May 16 for the 2021 Highest Awards Virtual Celebrations!  Missed the celebrations? That’s okay. You can watch the recordings now on the GSCO Facebook page or YouTube channel.

Facebook Links

YouTube Links

Whether you joined us live or are watching the recordings at a later date, we encourage troops and families to make these events feel special for their Highest Awards Girl Scouts in any way possible! Dress up, have your girl wear her Girl Scout vest/sash, decorate your home, or maybe bake something special. Also, be sure to share congratulations for your troop and help our Highest Awards Girl Scouts feel even more proud of their huge accomplishments. You can also use these Highest Awards social media graphics or share photos and videos from your celebration with us on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram. Twitter and Instagram users should also use #GSColo.

Honor Your Highest Awards Girl Scout

Honor your Bronze, Silver, or Gold Award Girl Scout by making a gift to Girl Scouts of Colorado to help us continue to support older girls who are making the world a better place! Make your donation here: https://www.girlscoutsofcolorado.org/en/support-us/donate.html

Questions? Email highestawards@gscolorado.org.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Join us for the 2021 Highest Awards Virtual Celebrations

Join Girl Scouts of Colorado on Sunday, May 16 for the 2021 Highest Awards Virtual Celebrations!

  • Bronze Award Celebration at 1 p.m.
  • Silver Award Celebration at 2 p.m.
  • Gold Award Celebration at 3 p.m.

You do NOT need to RSVP or have a link to attend the virtual celebrations. They will premiere live on our  Facebook page and YouTube channel at their respective start times.

Please share this information with all the girls in your troop who earned their award, and their families. We encourage all Bronze and Silver Award Girl Scouts to also attend the Gold Award celebration at 3 p.m. to hear about all of the amazing things Girl Scouts in Colorado did this past year.

Win a Prize

This year, there is a scavenger hunt for girls during the virtual celebrations! The scavenger hunt sheet is available to download now on our Highest Awards webpage.

To enter in the drawing to win a prize from the GSCO Retail Shop, submit your scavenger hunt sheet to highestawards@gscolorado.org by 8 p.m. on Sunday, May 16!

To find all of the scavenger hunt items, girls will need to watch either the Bronze or Silver Award celebration AND the Gold Award celebration. Girls do not need to watch both the Bronze and Silver celebrations for the scavenger hunt, the items from those celebrations will be the same.

Honor Your Highest Awards Girl Scout

Honor your Bronze, Silver, or Gold Award Girl Scout by making a gift to Girl Scouts of Colorado to help us continue to support older girls who are making the world a better place! Make your donation here: https://www.girlscoutsofcolorado.org/en/support-us/donate.html

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

New Castle Girl Scouts Earn Bronze Award

Submitted by Karen Campbell

Western Colorado

New Castle

It was an exciting time at Alder Park in New Castle on Sunday, April 11, 2021! Gracie, Sylvia, and Abby, three Girl Scout Juniors from Troop 10239,  officially completed the final installation of their Bronze Award project. Many family and community members came to help, including Ron Acee from Trout Unlimited; Tom Skutley and Sheldon Doonan from RFV Flyfishing Club; and Dave Reynolds from the Town of New Castle. The girls worked thru 2020 COVID challenges and winter weather delays. They finished strong with this important environmental project. Job well done, everyone!

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by Alder Park to read these valuable interpretive ecology signs, each written by Bronze Award Girl Scouts. If you are fishing at Alder Pond, please be sure to check out the new Fishing Line Recycle Bins. Recycle bins will be managed thru a partnership with the Town of New Castle and the Girl Scouts. Last, be on the look out for more fishing line recycling opportunities around the valley. With the help of local fishing club chapters, these girls donated three additional bins to the Middle Colorado Watershed Council and look forward to expanding the program. Special thanks to our community volunteers for bringing enthusiastic support, power tools, and great digging skills! Thanks also to Aspen Rent-All for the donation of a valuable generator for the day! We are thrilled to live in a place where our neighbors, businesses. and our city manager care enough to join a few motivated girls to get amazing things done!

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

 

New Castle Girl Scouts Earn Bronze Award

Submitted by Cindy Adams

Western Colorado

New Castle

Troop 10239 in New Castle, Colorado has three girls, Abby, Gracie, and Sylvia, who earned their Bronze Award in 2021. The Bronze Award is the highest award the girls can earn as a Junior. Girl Scout Juniors need to complete a Junior Journey, build a Bronze Award team, explore their community, choose a theme, and design and complete a community Take Action project.  The first step to earning a Bronze Award is completing a Girl Scout JuniorJourney and Take Action project.

Last summer and fall, the Girl Scouts earned their Outdoor Journey and started their Take Action project.  On the Journey, the girls held a clean-up activity at Alder Park, created animal habitats, hiked New Castle local trails, planned a camping trip, and created maps of Alder Park and waterways. The girls decided their Journey Take Action project will be a fishing line recycling program at Alder Park Pond.  This project was born from picking up trash at Alder Park and the girls picked up a lot of old fishing line. Fishing line is a frequent source of litter in ponds and rivers, and can cause injury and death to birds, fish, turtles, and many mammals. Monofilament fishing line takes 600 years to decompose (that’s 150 years longer than a disposable diaper!), but IT IS RECYCLABLE! Berkley Fishing provides free shipping boxes to mail in used fishing line to be recycled.

The girls built two fishing line recycling bins and will install them at Alder Park.  They also received three additional bins from the Roaring Fork Valley Fly Fishing Club, which will be donated to other community groups to install and manage as part of the program.

The girls were set to install their Take Action Project in November 2020, unfortunately COVID-19 regulations stopped them in their tracks, as girls from no more than two households could meet. The girls did not lose faith in their project, they just postponed the installation of their Take Action Project until April 11, 2021 now that COVID-19 regulations have allowed for groups to meet. The troop also has a COVID-19 plan in place with the Garfield County Health to meet in person.

Abby, Gracie, and Sylvia’s Take Action Project involved researching, talking with community members including Trout Unlimited and Roaring Fork Fly Fishing Club, presenting to the New Castle town council, building monofilament recycling bins, and installing them. The girls started their project in October 2020.  The girls received a donation from the Town of New Castle to help offset the cost of the fishing line recycling bins, as well as a donation from Trout Unlimited.

Since finishing the planning and construction of their Take Action project, the girls started to brainstorm ideas for their Bronze Award project. They had come to know Alder Park Pond, a neighborhood hangout, and decided that they wanted to build permanent educational signs for the community about the importance of the animal species, the wetlands, and the human impact on Alder Pond.  The girls said if people know and love a place, they will care for it! Sylvia, Gracie, and Abby presented to the Town Council their idea for both their Take Action project and Bronze Award project in October 2020 and both were approved.

Over the winter, the girls designed and produced three educational signs about Alder Park Pond by the end of February 2021. The girls plan to install both the signs and fishing line recycling bins on April 11.  These girls have learned so much about community involvement, planning, how a project that people get excited about can expand rapidly, and about perseverance.

Cooperating Agencies for the project included: Roaring Fork Valley Fly Fishing Club, Trout Unlimited, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Roaring Fork Conservancy, Town of New Castle, Berkley Fishing and BoatUS.org.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Celebrate Girl Scouts’ Highest Awards on Social Media

Celebrate your Highest Awards Girl Scout or your achievement of earning one of Girl Scouts’ Highest Awards on social media! Use any of the graphics at the bottom of this post to let friends and family know that you earned or are the parent/caregiver of a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Award Girl Scout. Be sure to tag us on FacebookTwitter, or Instagram. Twitter and Instagram users should also use #GSColo, #GirlScoutsGiveBack, #gsGoldAward, #gsSilverAward, or #gsBronzeAward.

Don’t forget to join Girl Scouts of Colorado on May 16, 2021 to celebrate our 2020-2021 class of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award Girl Scouts in Colorado!

Virtual Highest Awards Celebrations

  • 1 p.m. Bronze Award Celebration
  • 2 p.m. Silver Award Celebration
  • 3 p.m. Gold Award Celebration

These celebrations are an opportunity to recognize the outstanding Bronze, Silver, and Gold Award Girl Scouts who have earned their distinction in the last year. All troops and/or girls who have earned their Bronze, Silver, or Gold since March 2019 are invited to participate in a celebration of their choice.

You do not need to register for this event! The celebrations will premiere live on our Facebook and YouTube channels at the event start time.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Bronze Award Project: The Fire Department Helps Us, so Let’s Help Them

Submitted by Ada M.

Western Colorado

Fruita

While learning about our community, our troop found out that the local fire department was having a hard time getting the PPE (masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer) they need. My fellow Juniors and I decided helping them find this would be the perfect Bronze Award project during COVID.

First, we got permission and the details on what the fire department needed.

Next, we wrote a video script. We made a video to tell everyone why washing hands is important. It is especially important now, but it is always a good thing to do.

Then, we made posters and wrote an email.

We dropped the collection tote off at the fire department. It is outside, so people can drop items off at any time and remain socially distanced.

Now, with our parents’ help we are sharing the posters and email!

The fire department has already had items dropped off and we hope to see it grow.

Here is the email I wrote! Don’t forget to wash your hands and stay safe.

Hi,

My Girl Scout troop and I are currently collecting masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer for the Lower Valley Fire Department. Lower Valley Firefighters and EMT use 30 boxes of gloves, 200 masks, and gallons of sanitizer each month. They especially need medium, large, and extra-large non-latex single use gloves, disposable single use masks (paper or something similar), and any type of hand sanitizer. COVID has made it hard to find this stuff. Let’s help them fight fire and mend broken bones by searching for the supplies they need.

Supplies can be dropped off in a tote outside the Lower Valley Fruita Fire Department.

We are looking for more drop-off locations. If you have a business that would let us place a donation tote out from, please call (970) 812-0154 or email anecookies@gmail.com.

Thank you,

Ada, Girl Scout Junior

Girl Scout Troop 17091

The girls were also interviewed about their project by KKCO-TV/NewsChannel 11.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Centennial Girl Scouts Earn Bronze Award

Submitted by Colleen Dooley

Metro Denver

Centennial

Congratulations to Ali, Josey, Maisie, Paige, and Samantha from Troop 65346 in Centennial! They earned the Girl Scout Bronze Award for a project that provides birthday kits to low-resource families.

In February, the girls toured SECORCares, a food pantry in Parker, to learn about the needs of their community and where they could make a difference. They decided to put together birthday kits so that families who are faced with food insecurities could still celebrate their child’s birthday.

After compiling a list of what could be included in each kit, they collected donations to supply: a boxed cake mix, canned frosting, birthday candles, balloons, favors, party hats, and a homemade card; packaged together in a disposable cake pan. The girls made posters and handed out flyers during their school’s Family Night Book Fair to share information about their project and raise awareness about suburban poverty in their community.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic required them to move to an online donation drive in the spring, but they continued to spread the word and collected enough donations to build more than 300 birthday kits! Once the girls were permitted to gather again, they assembled and delivered kits to SECORCares, where families can shop their free food market – and now easily pick-up everything they need to celebrate a birthday!

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Grand Junction Girl Scouts Earn Bronze Award

Submitted by Jenni Grossman

Western Colorado

Grand Junction

Congratulations to McKenzie, Lauren, Abbie, Jolie, and Peyton from Troop 13497 in Grand Junction! They earned the Girl Scout Bronze Award for a project to help seniors in nursing homes who may be feeling lonely due to visiting restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The girls made videos and special crafts, including photos, drawings, and activity sheets, for multiple nursing homes in their area. Two of the nursing homes were chosen because one of the girls has a family member living there.

The Girl Scouts started a different project to earn the Bronze Award in February 2020, but then had to do a 360 in March when COVID-19 hit. They thought the residents of the nursing homes would be so lonely due to visiting restrictions. The girls decided to make videos of their favorite children’s books so the activities directors could play them for the residents. The girls also wanted some activities for the residents. After the girls called multiple places, they learned they had to laminate whatever they picked, so it could be sanitized. They each made five to ten different sheets (drawings, word searches, mazes paintings, colored pictures with uplifting quotes) for the residents. The girls also made copies of their work and laminated each one. Each nursing home received 40 drawing/activity laminated sheets. We also gave the organizations a list of the videos that the girls made so they could access them whenever they wanted.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.

Bronze Award Project Continues to Make an Impact

Two years after earning the Girl Scout Bronze Award, Troop 6608’s project continues to make an impact on their community. The Girl Scouts from Centennial rebuilt an outdoor classroom for their school, Willow Creek Elementary. It was completely overgrown, so the girls cleaned it up and built six benches, reusing a couple of dead trees. They also painted rocks.

We want to hear how your girl is using her Girl Scout skills by taking initiative, caring for the community, and Girl Scouting at home. She can send in her story here.