Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri Celebrates International Day of the Girl by Honoring Local Girls of the 2022 Gold Award Class
October 11, 2022
ST. LOUIS, MO ─ October 11, 2022 ─ Locally, Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri is proud to recognize the 31 members of the 2022 Girl Scout Gold Award class who make a sustainable impact, addressing causes they care about in our communities.
Nationally, Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) is recognizing the 3,500 members of the Gold Award Girl Scout class who identified the root cause of pressing issues in their communities, created sustainable solutions, and took action to earn the Gold Award: Girl Scouts’ highest achievement. This year’s class of world-changers invested over 300,000 hours in addressing real-life problems such as environmental sustainability, racial justice, mental and emotional wellness, and gender inequality in STEM.
The 2022 Gold Award Girl Scouts demonstrate the breadth of issues American teens feel are most prevalent in society today. Through their efforts, our girls are demonstrating a higher commitment to service and leadership. Whether girls are: creating innovative apps to help teens learn about healthy eating, helping area families get their basic needs met through diaper and wipe donation sites and creating a traveling closet of hope to provide gently used clothing to those in need, they are using their passions to identify and solve problems in their corner of the world and beyond.
This year, Gold Award Girl Scout Anushka Rawat, a senior at Parkway South High School, was a recipient of a national scholarship. After recognizing the lack of education and resources on healthy eating for individuals and families who utilize food pantries, Rawat created a robust digital cookbook filled with nutritious recipes made solely from food pantry ingredients. In 2021, she distributed her cookbook to more than 190 food pantries across Missouri and Illinois. Through a partnership with LifeWise STL, she translated her cookbook into Spanish, and she is currently working to share her cookbook with food pantries across the nation. Rawat also started her own nonprofit, Young Chefs STL, which now has 27 global chapters. Through the organization’s website, Rawat has been able to share her knowledge to teach chapter members how food scarcity impacts everyone with virtual cooking demos and webinars.
GSUSA’s 111 councils were each provided the opportunity to nominate one of their outstanding Gold Award Girl Scouts to receive a national scholarship for over $2,000 each. The GSUSA Gold Award Scholarship recipients represent $225,000 invested, made possible by Insight Global, The Coca-Cola Foundation, and Kappa Delta Foundation.
“Through my project, I impacted thousands of people,” Rawat says. “While this project impacted others, it has impacted me the most. The satisfaction of knowing that I changed the lives of others as a teenager brings a joy unmatched by any other. [It] taught me that I have the potential to change the world, one person at a time.”
To view the list of the 3,500 outstanding 2022 Gold Award projects, visit girlscouts.org/goldawardclass.
Girls in grades K–12 can join Girl Scouts any time during the year to begin their Girl Scout journey. As girls grow with Girl Scouts, they learn hands-on leadership skills they’ll use to make their mark through the Gold Award and beyond. To join or volunteer, visit girlscoutsem.org/join.
