Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Bronze Award

For about the past 5 months, K has been working on earning her Girl Scout Bronze Award. It is the highest award she can earn as a Junior Girl Scout. We considered several ideas before choosing to do a toy, backpack, and gift card drive for the Make A Wish Foundation of Orange County and the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties). All the proceeds from K's drive will go to fulfill wishes of local children facing life threatening illnesses.

K's project was a companion project to her troop mate M's project. M coordinated a "Letters to Santa for Make A Wish Foundation" project, where she went to several Girl Scout troops' meetings and had the girls write letters to Santa, then delivered the letters to Macy's on "Believe" day. For each letter to Santa written and delivered to Macy's, $1.00 was donated to Make A Wish Foundation. But on "Believe" day, each letter was worth $2.00. Marilyn delivered over 250 letters to Macy's. Way to go, M.

The Bronze Award is essentially a 15 hour service project which requires each girl to take a leadership role. K, with assistance from Amanda (her Troop leader), Matt and myself, took this project on. We started with a timeline for what needed to be done and when, K set goals, composed a letter to friends and family asking for assistance, helped design a flyer for her "Afternoon in the Park" event, emailed family and friends, distributed flyers to friends and family, updated her Girl Scout troop routinely, wrote thank you cards, planned her "Afternoon in the Park" event, baked and frosted cakes, hosted her "Afternoon in the Park" event, and finally delivered the toys, backpacks and gift cards to the Make A Wish Foundation house in Tustin, California.

Her goal was to collect 5 backpacks, enough items (toys) to fill 5 backpacks, and $100 in gift cards. She collected 18 backpacks (!!!), enough items to fill at least 8 backpacks, and $100 in gift cards. Her project was a huge success. A rough estimate of the dollar amount of what we donated today is around $600-650 retail. We are so proud of K!

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