Scouts strike gold

• Four Albany teenagers recently earned the highest honor for Girl Scouts.

Cathy Higgins

ALBANY — Four Albany teenagers recently pocketed a little gold.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

During a ceremony, the members of Girl Scout Troop 63 were presented Gold Awards.

“It’s the highest award you can get in Girl Scouts,” 17-year-old Whitney Dunn said during a recent interview at the home of troop leader Allison Stanton.

But Dunn and her fellow troop members, 17-year-old Kasi Wilkerson, 16-year-old Sara Truver and 16-year-old Sarah Stanton, put plenty of effort into earning the honor.

The group’s most significant effort was their project, “Scouts Love Kids,” which included collecting almost 300 toys last Christmas in conjunction with the Marine Corps Logistic Base-Albany’s Toys for Tots program.

But the Scouts’ work toward the Gold Award actually started two years ago. It began with a series of projects that included serving as counselors at Girl Scouts of Southwest Georgia’s Camp Okitayakani.

“It was a lot of work,” Dunn said.

But at least one Scout found other projects very appealing.

“My favorite part was volunteering at the animal shelter,” Stanton said.

The Scout liked spending time with the shelter animals so much that she’s factoring the experience into her consideration of career options.

“I think I’m really seriously going into veterinary medicine,” Stanton said.

While that particular project was ongoing, another one-day project also involved animals from the shelter.

“We walked with the animals at Albany’s Mardi Gras Festival,” Wilkerson said. “From that, eight-plus dogs got adopted that day.”

Other projects that the troop members did to earn their Gold Award included volunteering at American Legion’s fall festival.

Of course, the award, which consists of a pin each girl will affix to her uniform, is the pinnacle of achievements members of Troop 63 have earned.

Collectively, the quartet has racked up badges to memorialize their Scouting accomplishments.

A glance at their uniforms indicate the four girls have accumulated quite a few achievements. So exactly how many badges do they have?

“Too many to count,” Dunn said.

But a few of those badges represent the girls’ favorite projects.

“Probably earning the fashion badges,” Stanton said.

But the path to the Gold Award hasn’t been all work for the teenage Scouts. In fact, most of the troop’s meetings have been pretty laid-back.

“We’re more casual than most Girl-Scout troops,” Dunn admitted.

That means taking a surf-and-turf approach to a Scouting staple.

“We’ve camped out on the beach a lot,” Dunn said.

It also means putting their own perspective on the Scouts’ financial literacy programs.

“We’ve taken a lot of shopping trips,” Dunn said.

“My brother likes to call us the ‘90210 Troop,’ ” Wilkerson joked.

That laid-back approach stems from the fact that while the four girls enjoy the activities and leadership opportunities that Scouting offers, it’s the bond of friendship they formed as young Scouts that’s most important to the girls.

“We go to different schools,” Truver said. “When we get together for Scouts, it gives us an opportunity to talk that we don’t always have.”

But even in those times, the four Scouts have been learning valuable Scouting skills while working on a variety of projects.

“A lot of times they’ve been working toward a badge without even knowing it,” Allison Stanton said.

But their crowning achievement came when each of the four girls recently received the most coveted Girl Scout honor, the Gold Award.

“The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award that a Girl Scout 14-18 may earn,” states information provided on the national Girl Scout Web site. “For many, the leadership skills, organizational skills and sense of community and commitment that come from going for the Gold set the foundation for a lifetime of active citizenship.”