Four local Girl Scouts earn Scouting’s highest honor

Before 1980, the highest ranking Girl Scouts were awarded the Golden Eagle of Merit, from 1916 to 1919; the Curved Bar Award, from 1940 to 1963, and the First Class award, from 1963 to 1980.

Beginning in 1980, the Girl Scouts of the USA introduced two new awards for Girl Scouts aged 11 to 18: The Girl Scout Gold Award (for Girl Scouts 14-18) was established as the organization’s highest honor, and the Girl Scout Silver Award (for Girl Scouts 11-14). In 2001, the Girl Scouts added the Bronze Award for girls aged 8-11. The Gold Award was updated in 2004.

According to the official Girl Scouts of the USA website, “The Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouts, focuses on a 14- to 18-year-old Girl Scout's interests and personal journey through leadership skills, career explorations, self-improvement, and service.

“The Gold Award project is the culmination of all the work a girl puts into ‘going for the Gold.’ It is something that a girl can be passionate about - in thought, deed, and action. The project is something that fulfills a need within a girl's community (whether local or global), creates change, and hopefully, is something that becomes ongoing,” according to the Girl Scout website. “The project is more than a good service project - it encompasses organizational, leadership, and networking skills.”

Girl Scouts must go through a set seven step process in order to achieve Girl Scout’s highest honor. During the process, Girl Scouts must meet with a troop advisor, log leadership hours and career exploration hours, earn the Girl Scout Gold 4Bs Challenge Award charm, plan their Girl Scout Gold Award project and get the plan approved by the Girl Scout council (this process may also involve revisions to the plan based on the council’s recommendations), carry out the project and evaluate the project.

Last year approximately 5.4 percent (about 5,500) of all eligible, registered Girl Scouts in grades 10-12 earned the Gold Award. Four of those Scouts, Cherise Quamme, Kelly Randolph, Evelyn Larson and Sarah Mudrinich, are residents of Fayette County.

Led by troop leader Amy Vassey, a Girl Scout for 40 years and a troop leader for eight, these four Senior Girl Scouts have planned, created and organized three projects to educate and beautify the community.

Kelly Randolph is the only one of the four girls who is not in Vassey’s troop (she is a member of Troop 251, while Vassey leads Troop 417) and is also the only high school senior in the group. The 17 year old Peachtree City resident is the daughter of Freeman Randolph and Denise Moeggenberg, and has been a Girl Scout for 11 years.

At the age of six, Randolph developed a fascination with weather. “In first-grade, I don’t know why or where it came from, [I knew] that I wanted to be a meteorologist,” Randolph says. It was about that time that Tropical Storm Alberto blasted through the south, and perhaps it was Alberto that instilled a curiosity about weather into the then-first-grader.

Randolph’s Gold Award project was one she initially planned to do with a friend, but the timing of Randolph’s project and her friend’s schedule did not line up, and Randolph needed to go it alone on the project. She began working on her project proposal, with guidance from Vassey, at the end of April and met with the council at the end of June to propose her idea.

Randolph’s project idea, not surprisingly, fell in line with her area of interest: weather. Randolph proposed a weather day for elementary aged students.

“I decided that with Hurricane Katrina and the other weather phenomenon, it would be a good way to teach kids [about weather],” she explains.

After receiving approval from council, Randolph went full-steam into planning mode. Her event was scheduled for October 1; right in the middle of hurricane season.

Because her troop is sponsored by Peachtree City United Methodist Church, she was granted free use of the church’s youth facility on Windgate Road in Peachtree City. Her plan included setting up weather stations, where the kids would learn about specific weather concepts in a hands-on environment, as well as a guest speaker from the the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Peachtree City.

Her desire to have a meteorologist on hand as a guest speaker took some work to solidify; “I had to keep contacting the weather station because it was in the middle of hurricane season,” she recalls with a laugh. She did finally get Trisha Palmer, a meteorologist from the NWS office who works with the community in weather outreach, to confirm as the featured speaker.

Randolph put flyers up around the city and also sent out flyers through her service unit to make all of the younger boy and girl Scouts aware of the event. Randolph was careful to plan her weather stations to meet the requirements for the younger Scouts to earn a badge while in attendance. “I went through the Scout books and made decisions on what was appropriate for the age level so they could earn badges,” says Randolph.

Palmer brought in props to accompany her 45 minute speech, including a slide show and a tornado demonstration. The event taught the children about weather as a general subject, but also taught them about weather safety and disaster preparedness.

Randolph set up 10 stations around the room for the children to participate in including one where the kids made a safety kit.

Outside of the presentation and the safety station, the children also had the opportunity to build a barometer while learning about pressure relating to weather; make clouds and learn where they come from and what they look like; make a pinwheel; participate in a relay race with weather clothing; make a weather vane; make a wind sock; create their own rainbow snacks out of doughnuts; and make their own weather including rain and clouds.

Each child in attendance was charged a $5 fee to enter, which went to cover the cost of the materials used at the stations. While approximately 30 kids signed up to attend the three and a half hour event, about 50 actually showed up to the church on Oct. 1. Of course, any good Scout knows that preparation is key, and Randolph was prepared with extra supplies to cope with the additional attendees.

Kelly Randolph is currently waiting to hear back from both the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as the University of Georgia in order to make her decision on where to attend college in the fall.

This is the first in a three part series on the four Gold Award achievers. Keep your eye on The Citizen to find out about Fayette residents Cherise Quamme, Evelyn Larson and Sarah Mudrinich’s Gold Award projects.

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