Achieving the ultimate in the Girl Scouts is no easy feat but these girls proved to be worth more than their weight in gold.

Sophomore Deidra Howard and seniors Sierra Howard, Brigitte Sasser, and Megan Treglown, are the golden Girl Scouts of Gordon County Troop 7970. They have at-tained the Gold Award with the success of their individual community service projects.

The Gold award is the Girl Scouts’ highest honor and although it is considered the equivalent to Boy Scouting’s Eagle Scout badge, many do not realize, the community service work that goes in to earning this award.



According to Cindy Howard, Girl Scout Troop 7970 leader, Calhoun and Gordon currently has approximately 300 girls involved in Girl Scouts.

“People do not realize that Girl Scouts is more than sell-ing cookies—the mission is to develop strong community leaders. As a community, we hope that they bring those skills back to our area once they have finished college,” said Howard.

Howard stressed that it is unheard of for every senior Girl Scout in a troop to receive a scholarship. The three sen-ior scouts also participated in the 2009 Calhoun/Gordon County Youth Leadership program.

Before earning the Gold award, Girl Scouts can en-deavor to earn the Bronze and Silver awards. These four girls earned both awards in preparation for the Gold.

Howard explained that the Bronze Award is the high-est award to be earned by Junior Girl Scouts. “It is also the first big project you can do as a Girl Scout. For our Bronze Award we chose to help out the Kentucky Project. We gathered winter clothes, shoes, socks, stuffed animals, toys, and many other items possibly needed to send with the Kentucky Project,” she said.

The Silver Award is the highest award that can be earned as a cadette. The Troop project that earned them the Silver Award in-volved filling more than 500 1-gallon zip loc bags with toilet-ries for soldiers. The girls named the project “Hope from Home” and involved the com-munity and coordinated dona-tions to ship the bags to sol-diers in Iraq.

“We agreed that ‘Hope from Home’ was perfect because that is the idea that we wanted the soldiers to feel—that we hoped they returned safely and that their community supported them each and prayed each day for a safe return,” Howard said.

“The Gold Award is the highest award that can be earned by a Senior Scout or Ambassador Scout. The amount of work needed to complete this community pro-ject-based award is tremen-dous. To complete the Gold Award you have to attend a Gold Award Workshop, do three interest projects, 40 hours of Career Shadowing, 30 hours of leadership, and fi-nally for the project itself a minimum of 65 hours spent by the Gold Awardee working on the project.”

“The hours spent working on the project does not in-clude hours that volunteers work to help with the project—it is girl scout hours only. This being said there are a lot of pitfalls, mishaps, mistakes, and sometimes misunder-standings. Most people want to believe Girl Scouts, in general, are small children with cute pigtails and a wagon full of cookies but Girl Scouts is much more about leadership, career development, commu-nity service, and giving back to our community,” Howard stressed.

Deidra Howard’s Gold Award project challenged the faculty, staff, and students of Belwood Elementary to go green through recycling.

Sierra Howard’s project re-furbished the Fairmount Book Depository which included installing surveillance equip-ment, soliciting donations for supplies and computers, spackling and applying a fresh coat of paint to the walls, and adding decorations to promote a warm environment for read-ing.

Brigitte Sasser’s project, a technology camp, encouraged girls to explore career fields in technology, engineering, and design. Her goal was to eliminate stereotypes that many girls have regarding technical fields. Brigitte's project had an exciting end as she presented door prizes for all, and one of the participants with a new laptop.

Megan Treglown’s project provided a new playground for the children of Plainville Independent Methodist Church and the Plainville Community. She worked to solicit donations for grading, ground cover, and the play-ground equipment. She also worked to install the play-ground equipments and all of its safety components.

“We have worked through mountains of paperwork and put in long hours to earn this award. Earning this award has allowed us to become strong women with beautiful spirits and minds,” said Howard.

“These girls proudly repre-sented Gordon County, Girl Scouts, and Troop 7970 through their leadership, determination, and loyalty to themselves and their commu-nity,” she concluded.