By Elena Coe-McNamara
Staff Writer
Mira Costa junior Rose Darcy and senior Raquel Gerard have gone for the gold, literally, putting in many hours of community service in order to receive their Girl Scout Gold Award.
The Gold Award is the highest achievable award in the Girl Scouts of the USA, or Girl Scout’s program. Both girls had to complete a major community service project in order to receive the award. Darcy’s project involved the Redondo Beach Pop Warner Cheer Group, while Gerard’s project was centered around the students at Richstone Family Center.
“Doing this project really made me feel accomplished,” Darcy said. “When I was done, it was such an amazing feeling knowing what I had done to help a whole organization.”
Darcy became involved with Girl Scouts when she was in first grade, due to her peers and her dedication to helping her community. However, Darcy said she continued with the program through eleventh grade, so that her participation can help her through her future college applications.
“I also stuck with Girl Scouts for so long because it was a way for me to reach out to my community and make me feel like I was actually doing something useful,” Darcy said. “I also knew that if I stuck with it it would teach me valuable life skills.”
For Darcy’s Gold Award project, she chose to work with Redondo’s Pop Warner Cheer Group, a public cheer and football organization and by aiding new directors and participants. Darcy said have been past issues transitioning to the group where the girls would have to reteach new directors their dances, while the new directors would attempt to teach the dancers new routines.
“I chose this project because it’s something that I can personally connect with, being a cheerleader at Costa,” Darcy said. “When you’re spending so much time on something, you really want it to be something that you understand well and can relate to.”
In order to complete her project, Darcy worked with the current director, Kelley Jackson, to compile a binder with all of the information a new director would need to know, such as how to hire a new coach and how to keep track of all of the paperwork. Additionally, Darcy filmed the girls’ moves and made them into a DVD for new cheerleaders to watch and learn from.
“Working with the kids was easily one of my favorite parts of the project,” Darcy said. “Being able to see how much I helped their organization and how you can do such a large thing when you really put your mind to it was really amazing.”
Similar to Darcy, Gerard began Girl Scouts in elementary school during the second grade. Gerard said she became involved because of her mother’s encouragement and her own desire to be constantly involved with her community.
“I started to really enjoy the work that I was able to do through Girl Scout’s,” Gerard said. “It helped me feel like I was being a better person the more involved I was with my community.”
Gerard’s Gold Award project, entitled ‘Childhood Memories,’ consisted of her teaching a once a week class for the children at Richstone Family Center how to photograph. Gerard was able to do this with the aid of donations from family and friends of money, supplies, and cameras that the children could use.
“I knew I wanted to do my project on something with taking pictures and working with kids” Gerard said. “I looked for a local place with children that I knew could benefit greatly from what I wanted to do, and Richstone seemed perfect.”
Gerard worked with the children to create scrapbooks of pictures of happy moments in their lives. Gerard chose the project so that the children would always be able to look at their best moments with their friends whenever they were feeling upset. Gerard said that the most difficult part of her project was having to accommodate to the kids’ energy and focus levels that varied every week.
“Seeing the kids demonstrate the importance of self-esteem and friendship that I taught them through my photography lessons with my own eyes made me see that my project really did make an impact on some children lives,” Gerard said.
Leave a Reply