Juniors Kayla Rose, Claire Oliver, and Jaylen Smith have been working toward their Gold Awards for Girl Scouts. The Gold Award is the highest award one can receive in Girl Scouts and it’s the equivalent of the Boy Scouts Eagle Award.

The Gold Award is every Girl Scout’s long term goal as every girl scout must complete it. The Gold Award is received by establishing something to benefit within one’s community that can be used for multiple years.

The girls have been in the program since they were five years old and have been anticipating this project since. As each girl scout reaches the end of her time as a Scout, they are aware of one of their final missions in the form of this project and its contribution to the community.

Rose’s project works toward caring for babies in orphanages.“When babies are held and loved, they grow up having better relationships and being more mentally secure.” Said Rose, “Unfortunately, infants in orphanages are not shown enough affection since there are too many and sometimes people tend not to care for them since they didn’t birth the child.”

Rose plans to benefit orphanages by making a school club to fundraise, paying for a bus to transport the club members to the orphanage, crocheting baby blankets, and taking them as gifts. “Hopefully, it can become a McIntosh tradition that will be passed on long after I’ve graduated,” said Rose.

Oliver’s project was working toward golf cart safety on the city’s paths. She started her project with the intention of decreasing the number of accidents on the golf cart trails. Oliver said, “I’m working to the award by printing out stickers to hand out which I intend people to stick on their steering wheels. It will have reminders on it such as putting both hands on the wheel, the age limit, and going slower around turns to prevent the golf cart flipping.” While Oliver plans to reach out to people other than next year’s freshman class, she’s targeting them specifically as they’re the ones who will be new to the trails and predominantly driving golf carts as one of their main ways of transportation.

Smith taught technology classes every other Saturday to the active seniors at the Living Center Christian City. She wrote her own curriculum for technology classes about internet safety, basic internet skills, and using Gmail and Skype. In her last class, the seniors learned how to Skype. They skyped with a former McIntosh exchange student from Italy and a friend of her advisor who lives in Canada.

“Honestly, I think the personal connections will resonate the most. While the classes varied, the same group of senior women came to every class and we had a blast during every class. It was hard ending the last lesson because we’d become friends throughout the process. We even had inside jokes! They tried to talk me into coming back to teach again, and I just might once I finish all the Gold Award paperwork. I miss them, we had fun.” Said Rose.

Girl Scouts are known for bettering the community and the girls Gold Award shows it. From caring at orphanages, golf cart path safety, and technology classes at the senior center, the three girls make their mark on the community.