What happens when a group of Girl Scouts dedicate over 6,400 service hours to their passions? Amazing things.

This year, 80 Girl Scouts from the Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana council became Gold Award Girl Scouts. Each girl earned this highest honor by showing incredible dedication, foresight, and follow-through in their own ways. Together, they are certainly an impressive group of young women!

View photos from this year’s Gold Award Ceremony in our photo album on Facebook.
To learn more about the Gold Award, check out the informational program booklet on our website.

Part Five: Meet 10 Gold Award Girl Scouts

Continue to follow along to meet more Gold Award girls throughout this blog series!

Catherine K.

For her Gold Award project, Catherine painted a mural and created a mindfulness-themed craft binder for The Alive Center—a teen center in Naperville. She designed the mural with the goal of inspiring visitors into considering the art activities offered at the facility, while the binder itself offers multiple of those activities as mindfulness-themed crafts.

Skyler K.

Skyler wanted to improve the natural hiking path in the Lake Bluff Park District ravine, as well as expand the options for summer camps, local hikers, and future generations. Skyler’s project culminated in the design, construction, and installation of two wooden boardwalks throughout the ravine, allowing drainage and keeping foot traffic from pounding roots down further.

Katherine L.

When exploring her community, Katherine noticed the special needs programs in her area did not include music programs. Using her musical abilities, Katherine filled that need by working with a local organization, Seaspar, and composed a playlist of calming music to play during sessions in the sensory room.

Ashley L.

Ashley’s project, Red Shoe Project Indoor, collected gently used or new board games to provide to local elementary school teachers. These games provide educational benefits to students while they may be stuck indoors during bad weather or winter months.

Katherine L.

The Larry Fink Memorial Park had been flooded for months due to shallow rooted turf grass, making the area unattractive and unusable. For her Gold Award, Katherine worked with the Park District of Highland Park, uprooted the turf grass, designed a rain garden featuring native plant species, and planted over 1,000 seeds at the park. She also held a seminar on the ecological importance of rain gardens.

Helen Rose L.

Helen worked to raise awareness for COOL, a non-profit organization in that helps transition families who were previously homeless into affordable housing. With money she raised, she purchased plantings and a shed for one of the housing units, where volunteers could store grounds-keeping tools and maintain the unit more easily. She also routinely cleaned and painted different units, and installed new flooring in one unit.

Talicia L.

For her Gold Award project, Talicia created a fun area for children to read and explore literature in Oak View, IL. She supplied brightly colored bookcases, which are very inviting to the students, encouraging more reading.

Kathryn L.

Kathryn, for her Gold Award, redid classrooms at Wildwood Church. With volunteers, Kathryn painted three classrooms and painted the white board in the computer room. Thanks to Kathryn, there is now an all-new fun space to host Sunday school!

Abbey L.

Abbey transformed a heavily-weeded area at her school into a beautiful place students and faculty can enjoy. She planted herbs and vegetables and fruits for the culinary classes as well as planted beautiful flowers so the art classes and photography classes to get to use to take photos and create art.

Olivia L.

For her Gold Award project, Olivia rehabbed the library of a Chicago Public School and formed a Spanish reading book club. This book club was established with the goal of connecting Latino students back to their heritage by reading in their first language.

The Golden Word

Bronze. Silver. Gold. These represent the highest honors a Girl Scout can earn.

These awards each give you the chance to do big things while supporting an issue you care about. You might plant pollinating flowers at your school, or inspire others to go green for your Bronze. You might advocate for the homeless for your Silver, or create music programming for your Gold. Whatever you choose, you’ll inspire others and yourself along the way. 

As you earn one of Girl Scouts’ highest awards, you’ll change your corner of the world—and beyond. The possibilities are endless.

Learn more about earning the Girl Scouts’ Highest Awards.

Don’t miss out on meeting the previously featured Gold Award Girls Scouts!
Part One: Meet the first 10 girls (last names A-B) »
Part Two: Meet the second 10 girls (last names B-D) »
Part Three: Meet the third 10 girls (last names F-H) »
Part Four: Meet the fourth 10 girls (last names H-K) »