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On April 29th, the American Red Cross Western Colorado Chapter honored an area Girl Scout troop with one of the organizations top honors – the Real Heroes Award.

During the spring of 2010, Girl Scout Troop 411 of Cedaredge joined Girl Scouts across Colorado as well as the nation in organizing a community action Girl Scouts Forever Green project in their community to benefit the environment.

For their project, the girls held a Lights Out contest at their school to see which class could keep their lights off the longest during one day, thus saving the most money. They made signs saying “Lights Out Please” to remind staff and students to keep the lights out when
they weren’t needed. In fact, these signs were so successful during this
project that they are still being used at the school today.

Seventeen out of eighteen classes at the school participated in this project. The only one class who didn’t participate did so because the class had no other light source. Eight classes were able to keep the lights out all day, and all others did so at least half the day. The winning classes received prizes. The school saved approximately 142 kilowatt hours in just the one day. And its estimated thousands of dollars would be saved if the school did it every day.

Delta Montrose Electric Association provided a grant to these Girl Scouts to offer information to all students about saving energy at home as well as at school. A pledge card was given to all 450 students who participated saying they would use less energy at home and school.

This troop’s story and honor gained area media coverage. One of the stories was done by KJCT-TV in Grand Junction.