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