Girl Scout Senior Katherine from Chesapeake and Girl Scout Ambassador Lauren from Newport News have been honored for their exemplary volunteer service with a President’s Volunteer Service Award.
The award, which recognizes Americans of all ages who have volunteered significant amounts of their time to serve their communities and their country, was granted by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards program on behalf of President Barack Obama.
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| Katherine with GSCCC CEO Tracy Keller |
Katherine completed a project to address literacy among children. Katherine installed a lending library at the Boys and Girls Club of South Hampton Roads. She refurbished and built two bookcases, added four bean bag chairs to the reading area and collected over 600 books to donate to this lending library, as well as to Chesapeake Kids. She also painted a reading-themed mural to remind kids that reading can take them anywhere. Once her project was complete, Katherine created fliers to get the word out about how the lending library works and hosted a grand opening event where she read to children, helped them make bookmarks and gave each child in attendance a new book to each to take home. For this project, Katherine earned the Girl Scout Silver Award, the second highest honor and award a girl can earn in Girl Scouting.
Katherine has also been on three mission trips to West Virginia to repair homes and build walkways, participates in Relay for Life, has volunteered at summer camp and bible school and has participated in numerous other community service projects, including food drives and trash pickups.
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Lauren with Dr. Ashby Kilgore, superintendent
of Newport News Public Schools |
Lauren created opportunities for local youth to gain knowledge in the fields of aviation, aerospace and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) by hosting workshops in the community to teach youth about fundamentals of flight, the importance of STEM as a whole and about resources they can use to pursue interests in STEM. Lauren led activities that allowed children to build airplane models, see things fly and learn about aviation history. For this community service project, Lauren earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor and achievement in Girl Scouting.
Lauren has also led two other large-scale community service projects. She helped to organize a tutoring program to local youth pass their standardized tests. She helped plan Saturday tutoring sessions that were held at Denbigh High School, as well as get teachers involved in helping to tutor and provide snacks for the children who attended. For another community service project, Lauren helped organize a food drive at her school and helped to raise over $200 for local food pantries. These projects were funded in part by two separate grants from Disney that Lauren applied for.
The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, sponsored by Prudential Financial in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), recognizes middle level and high school students across America for outstanding volunteer service.
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