Gold Award Program 2023

Gold Award Girl Scouts Change the World

Gold Award Girl Scouts are change-makers. They have changed the world, changed their lives, and earned the most prestigious award in Girl Scouting.

To earn the Gold Award, a Girl Scout identifies an issue in their community, drafts a plan to address a root cause, and leads a team of volunteers to implement it. When the project is complete, the Gold Award Girl Scout and their team have made a sustainable impact on the world that continues to last beyond their involvement.

It’s a huge accomplishment that also impacts the Gold Award Girl Scout as a person. How they see the world—and how the world sees them—is forever changed. It’s also a credential that will be with them for the rest of their life; having the Girl Scout Gold Award on a high school transcript or resumé can make a Girl Scout stand out when it comes to college admissions, scholarship applications, internships, and job interviews.

We Are Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts bring their dreams to life as they work together to build a better world. Through programs from coast to coast, Girl Scouts of all backgrounds and abilities can be unapologetically themselves as they discover their strengths and rise to meet new challenges—whether they want to climb to the top of a tree or the top of their class, lace up their boots for a hike or advocate for climate justice, or make their first best friends. Backed by trusted adult volunteers, mentors, and millions of alums, Girl Scouts lead the way as they find their voices and make changes that affect the issues most important to them.

Girl Scout Mission

Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.

Girl Scout Promise

On my honor, I will try: To serve God* and my country, To help people at all times, And to live by the Girl Scout Law.

Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Girl Awards Ceremony

Rachel Holland, Chair

Board of Directors

Shelley Sylva, Vice Chair

Valarie Gilbert, Vice Chair

Bob Pantaliano, Treasurer

Anne Williams, Secretary

Ginny Hill, CEO

Directors

Karen Archambault

Fatema Basrai

James Carl

Patricia Claybrook

Danielle Esser

Erick Ford

Eileen Fuzer

Nicole Gillespie

Amy Gopshes

Deb Jennings

Kim Kleasen

Cathleen Lewis

Marla Meyers

Stephen Persche

Valerie Robinson

Girl

Representatives of the Board

Kavita Amin

Kashish Arora

Trisha Nakka

Diya Ramesh

Kejal Shah

Prisha Venu

Keynote Speaker

Allison Rodman Founder and Chief Learning Officer, The Learning Loop

Allison Rodman is the Founder and Chief Learning Officer of The Learning Loop, an education consulting organization that provides professional learning design, facilitation, and leadership coaching services to districts, schools, nonprofit organizations, and businesses internationally.

She brings experience as a teacher, instructional coach, school leader, director of teaching and learning, board member, and consultant.

Allie was a member of Holly Shores Brownie Troop #420 and Junior Troop #213 and South Jersey Pines Cadette and Senior Troop #6644. As a Girl Scout, she connected with Girl Scouts from across the country at Wider Opportunities in Georgia and Illinois and a Leadership Institute at the Edith Macy Conference Center in New York. She earned both her Silver and Gold Awards.

Allie now volunteers as a Girl Scout Leader and Service Unit Manager as well as a School Board Member. She owns her own business, has authored two books, and speaks at conferences and events around the world. One of her personal goals is to explore all 63 national parks. Allie lives in Haddon Township with her husband and three children –two of which are Girl Scouts

Award Recipients

Burlington County

Tilia Baratta, Troop 20714 Horseshoe Crab Rescue and Education

The project focused on education and leading volunteer walks on the rural coast of the Delaware Bay in Cumberland County, NJ to address a critical conservation issue.

Charlotte Cunha, Troop 20724 Library Where ART Thou

Since 2008, 80% of schools have reduced or cut the arts. Charlotte’s project inspired and supplied kids in Burlington with the supplies to create art.

Elizabeth Bennett, Troop 23472 Animal Care

Elizabeth’s Gold Award addressed the issue new pet owners have regarding taking care of their pets by creating videos and written explanations.

Melissa Willis, Troop 23794 Buzzing to Save the Pollinators

The root cause is the dwindling bee habitat. Melissa helped solve this issue by building bee habitats at a local nature facility in my community.

Dana Louise Ulriksen, Troop 24301 The Opportunities For All Fair

The Opportunities For All Fair brought together developmental, social, and occupational service providers for individuals with special needs to help disabled individuals find necessary services.

Nicole Sutera, Troop 25405

Cancer Care: Revitalized

Provided mental health education and resources through a quiet room for patients receiving chemotherapy.

Averie Elliott, Troop 25800 Mansfield Bark Park

Averie designed and constructed an area where community dog owners can have a safe and beneficial time for their dogs. She focused on three problems: damaged recreational fields due to unleashed animal exercise, poor understanding of animal hazards in public areas, and a high percentage of dog owners in the community who were unable to socialize and exercise their canines safely in her community.

Cara Gibbons, Troop 25800 Cara

Cares

For Cara’s Gold Award she aimed to comfort and support pediatric patients going through stressful hospital experiences and their concerned family members, via care packages and letters.

Kayla Mackney, Troop 25803

Kayla’s Knook Read Out Loud Program

Kayla’s Knook is a series of workshops that aims to remove students’ lack of confidence in their reading ability as a barrier to early literacy.

Emma Schrier, Troop 26040 Cells, Slime, and Structures

After noticing the need for interactive STEM activities in her community, Emma created an after school program to help students discover engaging sides of science.

Belynnda King, Troop 26123 The Bookhive

The root cause of this project was due to the pandemic. Belynnda’s project helped students to develop a love of reading and reduce screen time.

Camden County

Anna Dougherty, Troop 30710

Identifying and Addressing the Educational Needs of Female Students with ADHD Inattentive Type

The symptoms of female students with ADHD Inattentive Type often go unnoticed. Anna created a professional development plan for teachers about girl students with this diagnosis.

Anya Raetsch, Troop 30710 Period Poverty in High School

In order to address period poverty in high schools, Anya had free-vend dispensers installed, wrote and published a blog post, and spoke in front of the New Jersey Senate.

Logan Geyer, Troop 30710 Therapy Dogs for Seniors

The root cause of Logan’s project was seniors experiencing loneliness and depression. She addressed it by instituting an ongoing therapy dog program in two senior housing facilities.

Shayne Ventura, Juliette Destination: Girl Scouts

Shayne created a commercial and informational video to educate Cadette, Senior, and Ambassador Scouts on the Girl Scout Destinations Program in order to increase membership retention.

Gloucester County

Brenna Strehle, Troop 61719 The Sensory Pathway to Success

The Pathway to Success was implemented to provide students with an outlet to get their energy out before returning to class.

Kaelyn Charnitsky, Troop 61719 Finding Support for Children With Lupus

Kaelyn helped provide support for children and teens with Lupus by creating support groups that taught them about Lupus and gave them a safe space to connect with others.

Jennifer Levy, Troop 62444 Quilt of Memories

Jennifer’s project focused on revitalizing Central Baptist Church of Woodbury by creating a quilt of memories to serve as a symbol of inspiration for future generations.

Teresa Maahs, Troop 63232 Remember Me... Stories and Traditions Across the Generations

Remember Me... Stories and Traditions Across the Generations was designed to prevent the loss of stories and traditions by developing platforms that can be preserved.

Kai Greco, Troop 68116

The Adoption Option: Raising Awareness and Adoption of Shelter Animals

Kai’s project focused on increasing the number of shelter animals adopted in her area and spreading awareness of a local animal shelter.

Mercer County

Shriya Sudhakar, Troop 70052 Space Girls

Women only make up 20% of the workforce. Space Girls was founded to encourage girls to explore Astronomy and inspire them to pursue STEM, while ensuring that the future of the field is diverse in thoughts and culture.

Sangeeta Quddus, Troop 70052 Music For The Mind

Utilized techniques from music therapy to host 27 workshops for 160+ elderly participants by exposing them to different genres of music, helping them learn how to utilize outside of workshops independently to help manage anxiety, isolation, and stress.

Jahnavi Gupta, Troop 70052 The Be Happy Box

Jahnavi provided mental health resources and workshops to at-risk children in the Trenton area to help them combat early stress and learn healthy coping mechanisms.

Padmaja Khairnar, Troop 70052 A Magical Time Outdoors

A Magical Time Outdoors provided in-person tours of the Plainsboro Preserve White, Yellow, and Orange trails to Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops as well as the general public. These tours were to inspire kids and young adults to spend more time outdoors. In addition to the tours, using QR code technology, Padmaja created an interactive audio tour translated into 3 languages. This was done to help continue the tours of these trails.

Ashrita Kollipara, Troop 70052 The Gratitude Fashion Project

The most prominent root causes of unstable mental health are pressures and expectations from family, teachers, and friends which can cause kids to fall into very harmful depressive episodes. For Ashrita’s gold award project she developed and conducted workshops to help kids cope with these issues. In these workshops, she shared the value of sharing gratitude and the research of why it impacts our lives. These workshops promoted meaningful conversations and helped the participants to use gratitude in their daily lives.

Tara Konzelmann, Troop 70052 Let’s Talk About It

Tara’s project addressed the mental health struggles among adolescents and the mental health stigma. She created a club called “Minds Matter” at Grover Middle School in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District for grades 6-8. “Minds Matter” provided club members with a safe space to share what is going on in their life, their feelings, or anything else they would like to share. Creating this space and facilitating conversation was intended to help alleviate the stigma.

Tanusri Kumar, Troop 70054 Sand Volleyball Court Renovation at Duck Pond Park

Due to the lack of usable sand volleyball courts, Tanusri cleaned up plants and weeds, installed a drain system and added a court border.

Riddhi Sharma, Troop 70054 Language Arts Enrichment for Girls at Bal Kalyan Nagari Orphanage School

To address a lack of English skills, Riddhi Sharma ran a 4-week program in an orphanage in Mumbai to enhance students’ grammar, comprehension, and fluency.

Sriya Jonnadula, Troop 70056 Art Wellness at the Arts Council of Princeton

Sriya held workshops at the Arts Council of Princeton that educated youth about mental health and self-care, aiming to destigmatize the discussion of mental health.

Sanika Polanki, Troop 70071 Mindfulness Art Club for Senior Citizens

Sanika created an Art club for senior citizens at Bear Creek Assisted Living. At the club, they did an assortment of art projects like, bottle cap art and watercolor llamas. She also taught mindfulness. The purpose of this program was to provide senior citizens with a s ense of community and social activity.

Elizabeth DiGioia, Troop 70105 Therapeutic Horseback Riding and Safety

Elizabeth increased accessibility and safety for special needs riders participating in the Bright Meadows Therapeutic Horseback Riding program by adding outdoor lights, painting the obstacles, and making horse fly bonnets with directional markings.

Samantha Marusky, Troop 70587 Our Town

Samantha created a garden to bring attention to a memorial stone from a local company and a scrapbook to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of a local VFW. All to remind everyone of the service men and women who fought for us.

Swetha Ramachandran, Troop 71146 Econoledge

To address the lack of effective education on personal finance and careers associated with finance/economics, Swetha created a website and conducted middle school workshops.

Maitri Shah, Troop 71146 Learning Link

Maitri worked to address the issue of inequalities in education for children by creating a comprehensive tutoring website and directly working with students.

Vinya Lingamneni, Troop 71146 Let’s Get Literary

Let’s Get Literary aimed to increase young children’s interest in reading and language arts by teaching them intrinsic and extrinsic literary skills.

Meghan Sharpe, Troop 71331 Stress Less With Art

Meghan addressed the increased amount of stress that students are dealing with on a daily basis, and provide them tools to deal with this stress.

Aarushi Bansal, Troop 71807 All That Buzz - About Solinators and Pollinators on Unused and Underutilized Spaces

Aarushi’s project was inspired to find creative and alternative solutions to protect pollinator habitats. This was done by creating a pollinator garden at the Mercer County College Solar Array. In conjunction with Urban Promise Trenton, Aarushi organized and ran workshops as well as community tours to educate my community on the threat to pollinator habitats.

Abby Dorval, Troop 72026 From Stress to Success

From Stress to success aimed to address the issue of social anxiety and mental health awareness in schools. To help with this Abby transformed an old computer lab into a wellness room for middle school students. This included several interactive bulletin boards, a meditation area and a workout station to provide students with opportunities to relieve stress.

Sara Marincas, Troop 72026 Butterfly Garden at Miry Run

Sara built a butterfly garden in Robbinsville to provide pollination for the flowers and nature in the area. By building a butterfly garden in Robbinsville Township, it provides a new location for pollination and gives the butterflies a home and helps pollination occur. The garden is also a beautiful and restful space to come any enjoy nature for the residents of Robbinsville.

Janani Rajan, Troop 72804 Catalyzing Curiosity in Science

Janani created a free, accessible website that teaches fundamental Earth and Space science concepts to middle schoolers to help with lagging science education. She created a curriculum for this website by taking key concepts from various school district curriculums, and aligning it with the Next Generation Science Standards. Janani also created audio lessons, slideshows, quizzes, and demonstrations for household experiments that correspond to each unit on the website.

Middlesex County

Eva Nester, Troop 70036 Growing with Guitars

Eva’s project focused on teaching empowerment through music to early elementary school children. Her work concentrated on learning the technique behind playing the guitar as well as highlighting female musicians who perform songs with messages of confidence and self-love.

Nithyasree Vinodh Sangeetha, Troop 70051 Sensory Stimulation Simplified

There has been an increase in the lack of sensory play which is vital for childhood development. To address this issue, Nithyasree ran sensory classes for children at RISE, trained volunteers to run the classes in the future and taught the kids how to make sensory toys with affordable materials.

Srihitha Jagarlamudi, Troop 70051 Girls for Coding

There is a significant gender gap in the STEM field. Girls for Coding is an initiative to provide younger girls with the opportunity to explore their interests in the computer science field before the stereotypes in society surround them.

Shrinithi Seenivasan, Troop 70051 Combating Invasive Species

Invasive species are one of the most significant causes of biodiversity loss, but many people are unaware of the dangers they pose. In order to help educate her community, Shrinithi constructed native plant study plots at the Plainsboro Preserve to monitor the growth of invasive and native species. She also created brochures and worked with volunteers to remove invasive species from the trails at the Preserve.

Diya M. Patel, Troop 70051 Special Winners

Diya wanted to provide special needs kids in my community with an environment to do mentally challenging activities which they are not allowed to do at school due to their disabilities. She ran a program, Special Winners, that enables special needs kids to have a chance to perform hands-on activities and experiments.

Vrinda Kantamaneni, Troop 70051 English Overseas

English is a prominent bridging language between people, enhancing opportunities for jobs, colleges, creating connections, etc... To extend the growing opportunities chain, Vrinda’s project consisted of her going to a low-funded school in India, and teaching students, ages 6-11, how to speak and read English so they can acquire a useful skill set for the future.

Hanvita Mutyala, Troop 70051 Aspiring Designers of Youth

Havita organized graphic design workshops for girls 10-13 years of age that covered the basics of graphic design with topics such as spacing, images, colors, and different softwares. Her goal was to create a new opportunity by introducing the idea of graphic designing for young girls so they can explore the technological field.

Himasri Konatham, Troop 70071 Fabric Hearts for the NICU

To address the root cause, emotional strain caused by the disconnect between NICU babies and their mothers, Himasri created a program that produced 526 fabric hearts.

Sravya Aravapalli, Troop 70071 Intro to Java

Sravya’s project aims to address the underrepresentation of girls in the STEM workforce. To help with this issue she ran six introduction to java workshops for girls only. The girls also completed two programming projects. Sravya was able to help the girls feel more confident in their programming skills and comfortable in their ability to take a programming class in school.

Jaansi Patel, Troop 80004 Project Neurify

Project Neurify was created to reduce the gender gap in computer science with free videos and curated resources that comprehensively explain artificial intelligence to youth.

Dominique May T Nones, Troop 80096 Learning Through the New Normal

Dominique addressed the Covid-19 pandemic impact by helping an elementary school in the Philippines. She provided learning materials and taught how to be a philanthropist.

Samantha Alter, Troop 80096 Food Allergies: Avoiding Cross Contact and Contamination

Samantha addressed the safety issue of allergen cross contact and contamination with food through education, demonstrations, and creating resources that are available on various platforms.

Isabella Vazquez, Troop 80096 Get to Growing!

Due to the high prices in fresh produce, I provided an affordable way for the people coming to the food pantry at Lighthouse Christion Fellowship by creating a garden where they can get fresh produce so they are able to eat healthy and have healthy lifestyles. This was done in an effort to help address food insecurities in my community.

Kaitlyn Milcsik, Troop 80235 Making Friends is as Easy as 1-2-3

Kaitlyn Milcsik’s project addressed the negative impact social anxiety has on students during recess. She incorporated social skills techniques to teach students in grades first through fifth to improve social interactions. She built two “Buddy Benches” for students to act as a reminder that everyone wants a friend to play with.

Emily Satnowski, Troop 80877 Cancer Chemotherapy & Radiation Bags

Emily created Cancer bags to aid patients at RWJ Hospital and make their treatments easier. Emily’s family has suffered from cancer and she saw the lasting effects it left. She wanted to help people with this heavy process even if it was in a little way. These cancer bags were packed with the essentials that included: chapstick, coloring books and pens, water, beanies/headbands, etc.

Naml Ahmad, Troop 81097 Better Together

Naml’s Gold Award aimed to empower young children from the lack of understanding and knowledge within our society. This was done by designing workshops designated to strengthen the communities within my mosque and work place. The purpose was to encourage the children to work together and build stronger relationships to feel more confident and to help them understand that we are all equal.

Sana Borkar, Troop 81269 Soothe Your Stress

Soothe Your Stress’s root cause is aimed to help kids deal with stress through interactive workshops and a website they can refer to. It provides kids with tips such as drawing to help relieve anxiety during transformational phases in life.

Mirika Jambudi, Troop 81269 BookOrators

BookOrators helps student connect with reading by advocating for and highlighting representation in literature, along with conducting workshops, interviewing authors, hosting a podcast, and providing book recommendations for youth.

Tia Marie Hart, Troop 81345 Awareness of Black Lives Matter

To bring understand regarding the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was meant to bring awareness of African Americans, especially males, victims of police brutality.

Anushka Majumdar, Troop 81601 Ready Readers for Success

Anushka’s project addressed the issue of illiteracy among children living in underprivileged communities. She formed book clubs for kids directed towards developing solid skills for young kids.

Tara Mahon, Troop 83615 Improved Food System of the St. James Food Pantry

The amount of donations in a given day are overwhelming for the size of our food pantry, the reorganization and inventory application were the solution.

Emma Minerva Mohanty, Juliette Promoting Positive Mental Health Management to Students in The Mindfulness & Calming Center (MACC)

Emma’s project addressed mental health awareness by creating a sensory room, designated to be a safe space to regulate emotions and connect to further support.

Thank You!

A very special thank you to the volunteers that serve on the following Gold Award Review Committees:

Cherry Hill | East Brunswick | Princeton Shore Area | West Windsor | Virtual Committee