The silver award is about making a difference in the community. The Girl Scout Troop 10708 members Surenity Lewis, Ande Girard and Janette Valdovinos, with Troop Leaders Liz Lewis and Destiny Neal, have been working on their silver award. The troop decided to go with an idea called Caroline’s Cart.
“It’s a shopping cart designed for people whose parents are caretakers for children who are disabled or anyone who needs help. It fits up to 250 pounds where they can sit up front and shop with them in there, so they do not have to push a wheelchair along with a traditional shopping cart,” said Liz Lewis.
The idea came from Neal, who brought it to their attention when sharing ideas about the silver award and the ideas the scouts could use to earn the silver award.
“I had thought about having my son have special needs for quite a few years. He has cerebral palsy and seizures. I got with the Girl Scout troop, and they had talked about doing a silver award and didn’t know quite what to do. So we were all bouncing ideas off of each other, and I brought up that I wanted to do this and how there were other caregivers in town that could benefit from something like this. The girls ran with it. They did most of the planning and a lot of the presentations,” said Neal.
The scouts each had reasons why they chose Caroline’s Cart for their silver award and why they thought it would help benefit the community.
“I think it is a good thing for our community because many people need that to get around if they have kids with special needs and for the elderly, if people take care of them, it would be good if they can go around and shop and not worry about them so much. I think it would just be good overall,” said Surenity Lewis.
Valdovinos also talked about sharing ideas with the rest of the troop and why the project was meaningful to her.
“It’s been pretty good because we all get along, so it’s easy to communicate and express our ideas. This project means I will be able to help my community grow and have better systems around being able to transport disabled people,” said Valdovinos.
Girard explained about the drive-through and working with the rest of her troops.
“This project means for me that we are helping our community and people whom it is hard to shop for. If they do online shopping like Safeway does, they’re drive up. Sometimes they don’t get the right stuff, so this way, they know what they get. It’s been stressful working with the rest of my troops but also an experience with all of us working together. We’ve been working on this project for about a month or two,” said Girard.
The scouts were working on this project as a team and have already pitched the idea to Safeway with a written testimony by Neal. Safeway has committed to buying a cart, and Ashley Dudden will be making a custom plaque to put on the cart.
