Junior Troop earns Girl Scout Bronze Award
Project helps Bethany Children’s Home
Fleetwood Girl Scout Junior Troop 1956 earned their Girl Scout Bronze Award.
The Girl Scout Bronze Award is the third highest award in Girl Scouts of USA. It was introduced by GSUSA in 2001, and can only be earned by Girl Scouts at the Junior Age level which is 4th & 5th Grade girls.
The Bronze Award Project is a team effort by a group of Juniors, usually from a single troop. The project’s objective must be to benefit the local community and/or benefit Girl Scouting as a whole in some way. Each Girl Scout is expected to contribute 20 hours to the project. The project is to be girl-led, but, unlike the Silver and Gold Awards, adults may be onhand to assist and guide the girls when needed.
At the beginning of their journey, the troop decided to meet with the Director of Development at the Bethany Children’s Home located in Womelsdorf. They all sat down with her and discussed what the children’s home does for the community and what their needs were.
She explained to our Girl Scouts that their mission is to serve children and families in the community by providing a safe place of nurture, protection, and supportive care to aid our residents in their self-understanding, growth, and healing toward a brighter, healthier future.
After many conversations within the troop, the girls decided that they wanted to help the children’s home in more than one way. First, in the summer of 2018 the troop held a summer collection where they collected pool items, beach towels, flip flops, sunscreen, googles, etc. The troop dropped off the items collected and volunteered some of their time during one of the Bethany Home’s summer concerts. By doing this, the Girl Scout troop was able to see the campus grounds and meet some of the kids that have been in the children’s home for a few years.
A month after that, the
troop decided to take their first sewing classes at Joann Fabrics in Wyomissing. They were able to collect enough donations to make 80 pillowcases. The pillowcases were tie dyed during a camping weekend.
The girls had so much fun learning the process of how to sew and learning how to tie dye. While tie dying was messy, it was probably the most fun. They put a lot of love and care into the colors they choose and wanted to make sure they used beautiful bright colors.
Then in October and November the troop distributed more than 1,000 fliers around Blandon and asked neighbors to donate hygiene items. Simple everyday items that many people take for granite such as shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs/brushes, hair ties and shaving cream.
The girls felt that walking around and distributing fliers was the best way to spread the word about the Bethany Children’s Home was and what they needed. This was an effective way to introduce the Bethany Children’s Home to our own home town. With the kindness and generosity of our small town, we collected enough items to make more than 100 care packages stuffed with hygiene items.
One thing that really resonated with the Girl Scout troop is the fact that some of these kids come to Bethany with nothing but the clothes on their back; no safety items, no favorite stuffed animal to comfort them. These 4th & 5th grade girls were deeply saddened by this and wanted to find a way to be able to comfort each new child that arrives at Bethany. So, the project grew as the girls realized that they could do more.
They purchased enough fleece from Joann Fabrics to make 80 tied fleece blankets. Each of the 16 Girl Scouts hand cut all the individual tabs and tied the blankets together, on their own time, making 4-5 blankets each. With the whole project completed, the troop was able to drop all of these items collected and the blankets at the beginning of January.
The troop spent more than 350 hours on their project for the Bethany Children’s Home and could not be happier helping other children.