Generous Donor Support Shared Around the Council

Gold Award Girl Scouts

Gold Award Girl Scouts 2021-2022 Class

Clara Keller

The Gold Award is earned by girls in grades 9–12 who demonstrate extraordinary leadership in developing sustainable solutions to local, national, and global challenges. Since 1916, Girl Scouts have answered the call to drive lasting, impactful change.

Clara created an educational program to reach younger Girl Scout members on the importance of owls in our ecosystem. Clara's program focused on predatory birds and how we can help the declining populations and help increase population levels of Barn Owls. The program consists of owl pellet dissection kits that troops can checkout and use during meetings.

Shelby Starbuck

Focused on eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health, Shelby created educational materials, presentations and coping strategies for stress and anxiety in the classroom. The strategies consisted of "Coping Skills Baskets" that had various fidget toys and items for students to use to help them focus and destress during school. Shelby also presented her program to her local high school staff, the school board, local Lions Club and the local Rotary Club.

Nicole Blocker

Nicole designed an activity space and educational program at the Chapman 4:10 Irish Den so students could have a safe space to hangout, relax and spend time after school. Nicole said many students stay near the school when waiting for activities and sporting events to begin, so she wanted there to be an area where they could go and be safe while having fun in the meantime. Nicole built new shelving and an organizational space for games and distributed "Stranger Danger" programming so students can learn how to maintain their own safety.

Madison Moses

Passionate about education and getting kids outdoors, Madison created multiple lesson plans so teachers could utilize them as a way to teach outdoors instead of in their typical classroom setting. Her lesson plans included parts of plants and solar system learning materials for science classes. She created these lesson plans for kindergarten, first, second and third grade classes.

Lexi Ashcraft

Lexi grew in Girl Scouts as an avid camper at the Starwoods Outdoor Center and Camp Four Winds. With her combined passions for astronomy and Girl Scout camp, Lexi refurbished, organized and labeled all 12 telescopes located at the camps. Along with the restoration project, she also hosted multiple in-person trainings and created online trainings located in gsLearn so volunteers could learn how to use the telescopes and teach their troops when they are at camp. The training consists of information on telescope parts, how to calibrate a telescope, how to use it and how to put it away correctly.

Alyssa Farris

With a passion for educating youth, the outdoors, learning and music, Alyssa knew she wanted to reach a broad audience with her Gold Award project. In an effort to educate children on music, she focused her project on creating four music sensory walls. These walls were placed in three different locations around her town. To create the walls, Alyssa used pallets and built the wall portion. She then added different recycled items and materials and attached them to the wall so kids could create different sounds with the items. Along with the wall, she included objects that could be used to hit the buckets and pots so the children could explore the different sounds created with each tool and item.

Lauren Schmeidler

Passionate about making the world a better place and supporting fellow women, Lauren knew she wanted to take action at the state-level by lifting taxation on feminine hygiene products. Lauren researched and created a plan where taxes can be removed from hygiene items and diapers by potentially increasing the tax rate on vape products. She gained support through an online petition and sponsorship through Representative Miller who introduced the bill on the House floor on Jan. 10, 2022. Lauren was also supported by Senator Ware, Representative Schmidt and Representative Clayton.

Rebecca Losey

Rebecca’s love for outer space led her to educating her fellow Girl Scout sisters on space science so they could have an appreciation and potential love for space as well. Rebecca based her project around the Space Science Badge series available for Daisy, Brownie and Junior Girl Scouts. In the badge kit, all of the materials necessary to earn the respective badge are included. The kit now lives at the Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland Wichita council location so troops can check it out and use it during their meetings.

Emily Glenn

At Camp Four Winds, the dilapidated amphitheater was unusable. Emily's Gold Award focused on updating the amphitheater by tearing down the old backing and replacing it, fixing the concrete area and building new benches. Along with the updated space, she also created a book with songs and skits so she could share camp traditions with future Girl Scout campers.

Della O'Donnell

Della created a pollinator garden at the Starwoods Outdoor Center. She created instructions on the necessary maintenance of the garden as well as information on potential plants that could be added and information on various pollinators. In the garden, Della planted native perennials for easy maintenance, used upcycled materials to create water globes and created pebble trays as water stations for the pollinators to drink from. The garden is also certified with the National Wildlife Foundation.

Meredith LeFevre

At the local elementary school, the play pad was already home to a painted map of the United States, but it was chipping, cracked and not in a state for good use. Meredith not only repainted the map so it could be useable during recess and classes, but she added a symbol in each state to represent it. The symbols help the students with state recognition and help them further their geographical knowledge. Meredith’s goal was that the students would be excited about learning by making it fun and engaging.

Milly Thornberry

Milly’s project, the “Artists’ Impact,” stemmed from her own love and appreciation for art and art education. Her first goal was creating and implementing a mural in the local middle school bathroom, as she wanted to encourage the younger generation to be interested in art. The second part was furthering her reach. By distributing flyers to area schools, she reached out to every art teacher in the district to encourage them and their students to join the “Artists’ Impact” by creating their own mural, posters or sticker campaign to place around the school.

CayLee Johnson

In pursuit of furthering her own education and increasing her reading level, CayLee's project focused on something that not only impacted her personally, but impacted those who may need it most. CayLee purchased children’s books and created audiobook recordings of them to donate to Wesley Children's Hospital. She put the recordings on mp3 players and donated the players, headphones and the physical books for the children to use during their hospital stays. CayLee made sure that the mp3 players and headphones would be easy to sanitize in between uses so the hospital staff would be able to maintain them for the children. In total, she recorded over 20 stories.