Girl Scout Junior Troop Installs Blessings Box to Support Their Community
The month of January marks Poverty Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness and shine a light on the growing levels of poverty in America through analyzing, understanding and supporting solutions to end poverty in local communities. Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri (GSEM) Junior Troop 3125 worked to support their neighbors with a blessings box, a freestanding structure that provides basic non-perishable food and hygiene items, to help those in need and earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award.
The members of Troop 3125, Maggie Dunkin, Callie Conway, Naisha Singh, Elaina Broeckling, and Amelia Hill, rehabbed and installed a worn-out blessings box and relocated it to their neighborhood. They also shopped for donations with their troop funds earned through participation in the Girl Scout Cookie program to fill the blessings box initially and provide a local coordinator with extra funds to restock the box as needed in the months to come.
“I was very excited to help more people in my community and earn my Girl Scout Bronze Award,” said Elaina Broeckling. “We built the blessings box so we could help women in need and support them.”
“Some of our project struggles included taking the shingles off the old blessings box and mixing up the cement to install the box in the ground,” said Callie Conway. “We learned some of these things from a professional builder!”
“We are women helping other women,” said Maggie Dunkin. “We want to build other people up!”
The Girl Scout Bronze Award is the highest honor a Girl Scout Junior, girls in 4th-5th grade can achieve. It requires girls to identify a need in their community and dedicate on average more than 30 hours towards addressing and solving the issue. When Girl Scout Juniors focus on an issue, they care about, learn the facts, take action to make a difference, and they gain the confidence and skills that catapult them to lifelong success.
