Girl Scout organizes April 29 sustainability workshop for kids

I am a senior at Rocky River High School and I have been in Girl Scouts for over 10 years achieving, both my Girl Scout bronze and silver awards. My next goal is to achieve the highest award a Girl Scout can get, the Gold Award. This award requires a Girl Scout to reach out into her community and create a project that will continue when she leaves.

For almost half a year I racked my brain for ideas for my project. Let me tell you, detailed projects do not come around in one night. During this time I was also in the progress of deciding my major for college. As I kept researching, I found the sustainability major, which in a nutshell, works with the environment. As time progressed, I fell in love with sustainability. I will be pursuing this major in the fall at either Baldwin Wallace University or University of Colorado-Boulder.

After my major fell into place, my Gold Award project started to form itself around the environment too. I felt a deep affinity to help the planet, and to inform the world how they could, too.

For my project I will be teaching kids about reducing, reusing, recycling and other ways they can help the planet at home. These ideas will be incorporated into a craft, a game and a talk from the Bay Village Green Team.

My goal is to buy as little as possible for my project and instead reuse products most families usually throw away.

For the craft, kids will be decorating milk jugs turned into bird feeders that they can take home. I have reached out into my community asking several people to save their milk jugs after they were done with them. The kids will be able to hang them in their back yard to help discover nature by feeding the birds.

The past month, and up to the day of my project I will have been saving two months of recyclable material at my house. This will show how much a family of two can save from the landfill, and will also serve as a fun recycling game. The kids will have to separate the different types of materials such as plastic, glass or aluminum and put them into different bins.

I also wanted guest speakers to get involved at my event. I contacted the Bay Village Green Team, and three members graciously volunteered to speak. The Green Team will be interactively talking to the kids about what they do in the community and ways the kids can help too.

My program is free to attend and will take place on April 29 at the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center. 28782 Wolf Road in Bay Village. There will be two sessions to attend: Session 1, for ages 6-8, will be held from 12-1:30 p.m. and Session 2 is for ages 9-12 and will be from 2-3:30 p.m.

The event is pre-registration only and is being capped at 30 kids per session. To sign up your child, you can contact me, Tammy Blankenship, at 440-668-3543.

Achieving my Gold Award would be a great honor to me. If I receive my award not only will I be eligible for several scholarships and recognitions, but I will feel great about teaching our future generations how to be nice to our planet!

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Volume 4, Issue 7, Posted 10:42 AM, 04.03.2012