The Gold Award is the highest award a girl can earn
in Girl Scouting. It’s a national standard that acknowledges a girl’s accomplishments, leadership, commitment, creativity, and personal effort to make the world a better place. Each Gold Award is a significant achievement in a girl’s life and an extension and compilation of all she has learned through her Girl Scout experience.

For our first Gold Award Girl Scout recipient Abigail Blackburn, her project “A Novel Idea,” was created during the pandemic with closed libraries and schools. She wanted to help others escape feelings of isolation. Abigail built five community book boxes filled with a variety of items to help others. The book boxes were filled and installed by her, she also added directions, and added a mental health questionnaire she created. Her idea for the book boxes was shaped around the hope that reading would help her community escape the restrictions of Covid-19 and bring comfort. She also provided the suicide prevention hotline and domestic abuse hotline’s number so people could reach out for help if needed. She has also ensured her book boxes will continue to inspire change by connecting the data that this created to a local statistics teacher and a local psychology teacher to use in their curriculum.

Abigail states “Mental health can sometimes be put on the back burner, but it is just as important as physical ailments.”

Abigail says, she’s learned the importance of finding ones’ passion, sharing it, and serving her community.

Our next Gold Award recipient, Abigail Moulton, with her project “New Youth Group Room,” created a new youth group room at her church by converting a storage room into an inviting place where people can meet. Before, the youth group had no dedicated place to fellowship and the number of young people who came to the church meetings was low. At her youth group meetings, they do volunteer projects that benefit local charities. Now that the church has its own youth group room, more people will join and the church will be able to do more volunteer work. Abigail enlisted the help of the current youth group members, who spent many weekends helping her move furniture, paint, and decorate the old storage room. In the process, they learned how to use tools, paint, and demolish unusable items. The youth group, the church, and the community all benefited from this new youth group room!

Abigail says, “I learned how to manage a big project and I learned that I couldn’t have done it alone. I needed the help of the youth group and my mentor.”

Abigail plans to pursue a career in art and plans to start an art business.

Our third featured Gold Award recipient, Ainsley Berlingeri, created an inspiring locker room through her project “High School Varsity Softball Locker & Inspiration Room.” The locker room is at the Adolfo Camarillo High School for the softball team in an effort to bridge the gender inequality gap. The boys baseball team had a locker room while the softball did not. She found a team willing to help her build full sized lockers for the newly established locker room. Siz sets of three lockers were cut, glued and transported to the school with the help of Ainsley’s project team. The varsity softball team helped her stain and arrange the lockers. She was even surprised with enough funds to create more than just the lockers. Because of generous donations a fridge, TV, and tables were also added to the locker room. Inspiring messages line the walls of the new room to encourage all the women who enter.

Ainsley laughs, “With enough nails and glue, anything will stay together!”

Ainsley plans on becoming a psychologist after graduating. She is also considering law school once she completes her Masters’ in Psychology.

For more information about the Gold Award and how Girl Scouts are creating positive change within their communities, visit here.