On Sunday, April 10, GSCM will be awarding Girl Scout’s highest honor, the Girl Scout Gold Award, to 94 girls. To earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, girls must use the organizational, leadership, project management and networking skills they acquired as a result of their Girl Scout experiences. The girls’ projects covered a wide range of services and needs, and all had a significant and sustainable impact on the communities they served. We decided to highlight a few projects here on the GSCM blog to showcase the incredible work Girl Scouts do.

One of this year’s projects was the formation of a support group for teens impacted by a cancer diagnosis of someone close to them by Kelly of Troop 2326. She gave us an overview of her project in her own words:

I began work on my Gold Award in August of 2009 after my mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I found mentors from The Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center and The Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults.



Another student and I began work on a support group for teens in Howard County who know someone diagnosed with cancer. We formed a steering committee of teens to decide what the structure of the group would be and decided on a drop-in group that would meet monthly.



Our group was named Teens Together. We created a Facebook group to reach the teens and keep them updated. Our kick off event happened in May of 2010. We were happily surprised to meet a number of teens representing different schools. My partner and I worked very hard to get the word out, and we spoke to the high school guidance counselors in the beginning of the process and again this fall at a Team Leader meeting to give them an update. I also spoke at the Board of Education about Teens Together.



The group continues to grow as we meet every month. The feedback we have gotten from the teens is that they like having somewhere they can go and not have to deal with ‘pity eyes’ and that they also wouldn’t know about anyone in the same situation as themselves if it weren’t for Teens Together.

Read more about Kelly’s project in this Baltimore Sun Article. Congratulations to Kelly and all of the amazing girls who will be honored this Sunday.