OXFORD – Oxford Girl Scouts recently received awards for a project that took them nearly three months to complete this summer. From April to July, the five girls donated nearly 200 hours to landscape and improve the Oxford community pool. The work of the girls is estimated to have saved the village over $1,300. That sum doesn’t count the girls’ efforts to rally local businesses to donate materials, such as new garbage cans, or the cost of the supplies they used to perform the work.
The five girls, all of whom are 15 years old and sophomores at Oxford High School, began participating nearly 10 years ago beginning at the earliest level of Girl Scouts called Daisies. Jessica Roach, Shelby Myers, Erica DeWispelaere, Trisha Chmielowicz and Catherine Barrows – with the help of their troop leader Sue Myers – removed garbage, painted, landscaped and raised funds to achieve their Silver Award.
Each girl was required to donate 35 hours of volunteer time for the project but most gave more, donating hours after school and on the weekends. In addition to this, the girls had to complete several prerequisites demanding even more time and effort before earning an award at this level.
The girls are going to attempt to gain their Gold Award next. This would require each girl to sponsor her own community project independently and is the highest award that can be achieved under the age of 18. The Gold Award has greater requirements and would demand more hours and work respectively. It is also designed to get the girls involved in careers of interest by requiring, in addition to many other things, 40 hours of job shadowing. Most of the girls work with the scouts in hopes of gaining more academic and community clout when they begin applying to colleges.