Submitted by Olivia Van de Kerkhove
Colorado Springs
Pikes Peak
Our Silver Award project was quite an experience! The Girl Scout Silver Award Take Action project requires each team to leave an ‘everlasting’ change in the community, so we decided to plant three fruit trees in the garden of our local Care & Share Food Bank. It was definitely not the fastest project, nor the easiest, but it was enjoyable and rewarding in the long run. We used the small team approach for our Silver Award, and we all discovered our strengths and weaknesses during the duration of the project, and things that we didn’t know before. Some of us were more fit for coming up with solutions to problems we encountered, and others discovered we were natural leaders. Some also discovered that we are better at communication than the manual aspects, and vice versa. But we all learned something new about ourselves.
We were able to connect to our community through Care & Share by meeting and becoming familiar with the garden coordinator, Ms. Ross. We asked Ms. Ross to be our project advisor and she was the one to suggest planting trees as a project. She pointed us in the right direction for the kinds of trees to purchase through personal experience with previous trees in the garden (i.e. plum and apple trees tend to do well, but peach trees don’t). We also did online research of what types of trees do best in our particular climate. We ended up planting two Scout Apricot trees, and one Dwarf Plum tree. Volunteers at Care & Share did the initial preparation of the planting sites for the trees, and the tree nursery provided us with planting instructions. Our team recruited three friends as volunteers to help with the planting, and Ms. Ross also jumped in to help. We all took turns shoveling, digging with our hands, arranging drip lines, stomping on dirt and spreading mulch. When we had finished, we had three healthy trees planted that will hopefully provide fruit for our community for many years to come. If you need help maintaining your trees in your yard then hire an Atlanta professional tree care company.
Our project had a large impact on our community, as well as on ourselves. We picked up better communication skills with each other as well as with other people. The trees will hopefully grow lots of fruit that can be eaten or utilized to make jams and jellies by Care & Share. We will check up on the trees in the future to see how they are settling into their new environment, and if they are producing fruit. This project has helped us become more connected to our community, to “help people at all times” as said in the Girl Scout Promise, and to be “friendly and helpful” as said in the Girl Scout Law. This project helped us to grow as individuals, to develop our skills as leaders and as teammates, and to become more connected to the community we live in.
Silver Award Team: Olivia V., Emma V., and Leah J. Troop: #43871
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