Fayetteville students Amy Evans and Amy Wallace have earned Girl Scout’s highest honor, the Gold Award. Evans, daughter of Charlie and Lynnell Evans of Fayetteville, is 17 and a senior honor student at Fayette County High School. Wallace, daughter of Jeff and Terry Wallace, is 18 and a senior honor student at Whitewater High School. The girls do not belong to a troop but are individually registered as Juliettes with the Girl Scouts of Pine Valley Council. Between them they have 25 years of Scouting experience.

Less than 5 percent of girls who join Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award recognition. Those who do earn this prestigious award must demonstrate leadership skills, career planning, community involvement and personal development. A major requirement is planning and completing a community service project. For their project, the girls chose to help Promise Place (formerly known as the Fayette County Council on Domestic Violence), a community organization that assists domestic abuse victims in Fayette, Pike, Upson and Spalding counties.

Evans and Wallace provided updated and new educational and instructional materials for use in the Teen Dating Violence Program taught in health classes in all Fayette County high schools. They also created a Teen Dating Violence Program in a Box for the Pine Valley Council to be used by Girl Scout leaders. Additionally, their project provided new and revised materials to help educate, inform and assist the community regarding domestic violence issues. Domestic violence materials were provided in both English and Spanish to allow Promise Place to be of service to Hispanic clients.

Together, the girls spent more than 200 hours working on their Gold Award project. Other persons assisting with the effort donated more than 50 hours of their time. The students agree that the most difficult task was the translation of Promise Place’s program materials into Spanish. They are grateful for the translation assistance they received from Señor Efrain Garcia, Spanish instructor at Fayette County High School, Señor Kristopher Muir, Spanish instructor at Whitewater High School, Ms. Rosi Milla, a bilingual community resource, Dr. Lucy Lee, Spanish professor, Ms. Molly McCleery, student assistant and the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, Sigma Delta Pi, all of Truman State University in Missouri.

The girls chose to help Promise Place because the organization meets a growing need in the community. Promise Place recently opened an emergency shelter for domestic abuse victims and their children, providing a place for victims to turn to for safety. It is the first DHR certified emergency domestic violence shelter in Fayette County and serves the Griffin Judicial Circuit. The benefit of this Gold Award project is that it meets the immediate needs of Promise Place but also provides ongoing service to the community.

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