St. Joseph Girl Scout Miranda Hahn knew she had to complete her award set.
She had her Bronze Award, which is the third highest award a girl scout can earn.
The Bronze Award project is a team effort led by a group of juniors. The project must benefit the local community and or benefit girl scouting as a whole. Each scout must contribute 20 hours to the project.
She had her Silver Award, which required her to contribute 50 hours to the project that made a positive change in her community.
And after a ceremony held on Sunday, she now has her Gold Award.
The Gold Award is the highest achievement within the Girl Scouts. Only 5.4 percent of eligible Girl Scouts successfully earn the Gold Award.
“Working on a Gold Award project is a lot of work,” Hahn said. “There is a requirement of 80 hours, which at first sounded crazy to me, but after realizing how much work would need to be done, I knew I would have plenty of hours.”
For her Gold Award project Hahn decided to create a Girl Scout Room at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. Hahn felt there was a need for a dedicated space for Girl Scouting in the Community since the Boy Scouts have a building near village hall that they use for their meetings. She also felt that a dedicated space may help the program continue since it would hold supplies and information that troop leaders would need. Hahn spent many hours researching what the room would need and where she could buy items at the best prices.
“Many local troops hold their meetings there, so I created a space for troops to have many of the supplies available that they would need,” she said. “This includes badge books, craft supplies and general information that could help the troops.”
Hahn said she originally got the idea when her troop went on a trip to Savannah, Georgia to visit the birth place of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. Hahn’s troop leader Dina Fox suggested a Girl Scout room that local troops could use as a Gold Award Project. Hahn saw the potential in the project and ran with it.
Hahn said local troop leaders helped her with the project since they knew what they would need for meetings and what their troops would need to earn badges. Several friends and family also helped her with cleaning, organizing and coming up with ideas for the room.
Hahn said she thinks earning the Gold Award will help her in the future because of the skills she gained from working on the project.
“I had to develop better leadership and communication skills in order to get the room and to find people to help me,” she said. “I also had to be able to plan ahead so I knew where things were going in the room and so I did not go to work on the room and have no idea what to do.”
The Gold Award is the equivalent to the Boy Scout Eagle Scout and was founded in 1916. From 1916 to 1918 it was called the Golden Eaglet of Merit Award, from 1919 to 1938 it was called the Golden Eaglet award, for the following two years it was called the First Class Award and from 1940 to 1963 it was called the Curved Bar Award.
This award was earned by Intermediate Scouts who had already earned the First Class Award and were the way to bridge to Senior rank. Because of the shortage of metal during WWII, at first the award was a curved embroidered patch worn on the uniform.
In 1947, the Curved Bar pin was introduced. In 1963 to 1980 the award was again called the First Class Award. Cadet Scouts were required to earn four challenges, plus at least six badges in specific areas including social dependability, emergency preparedness, active citizenship and the Girl Scout Promise.
In 1972 the challenges were expanded to include arts, community action, environment, international understanding, knowing myself, my heritage, out-of-doors and today’s world. They also had to earn one badge in each of the six areas including arts, home, citizenship, out-of-doors, health and safety and international understanding.
In 1980 the award was renamed the Gold Award. Scouts must now complete two Senior or Ambassador Journeys or complete one journey and earn the silver award. Finally. they must plan and implement a take action project that reaches beyond the girl scouts and provides a sustainable, lasting benefit to the community.
Hahn said the thing she enjoyed most about Girl Scouts was the opportunities the organization provided her with.
“One thing I want the general public to know about Girl Scouts is that it teaches girls many useful skills,” Hahn said. “There have been changes made to Girl Scouts that are not necessarily popular, but overall girls have the chance to learn skills that can help them in many aspects of life, especially leadership and communication. Along with this, I want the people to know that Girl Scouts do a lot more than sell cookies, and even selling cookies teaches girls many skills.”
