Carolyn - Bronze Award

Carolyn recently earned and was awarded her BRONZE girl scout award.  This is one of the highest awards she can earn as a girl scout.  She can now begin working on her SILVER award, and then when in high school, can do a GOLD award.  The gold award is akin to the Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts.  For each of these award levels, the girls have to learn about a need in their community and then create a project to carry out within their communities.  With each level, they are expected to do even larger projects and do them even more independently.

For the Bronze award, she worked together with a small team of other members in her troop, where they researched how animals are used for therapy with children in hospitals and other health care settings.  They interviewed and toured a number of children's health care centers, and also worked with the animal trainers to learn what kinds of animals are trained for these purposes.  For their project, they worked with "Sharing Place" a local organization that provides grief counseling for children.  They worked with the counselors, learned how therapy animals are sometimes used, and then ran an all-day fundraiser/carnival for the organization. They also made a number of "tugs" that the service animal groups use to both entertain the dogs and also provide a way for the dogs to open up doors. (Prior to doing the bronze project, she also had to do a 'journey' award where she learned about energy and conservation.  For that project, she sewed reusable lunchbags from an old camping chair that was broken and was going to be thrown away.  She gave them to her teachers and some friends, along with a note about how many plastic bags are wasted and thrown away each year, and how long they take to decompose in a landfill)