Girl Scout Gold Awardees Emily Fuhler, Alexandra Lloyd and Tera Sparks Nominated As National Young Women of Distinction

 

GSSI has nominated three Girl Scouts from Southern Illinois as National Young Women of Distinction: Emily Fuhler from Trenton, Alexandra Lloyd from O’Fallon and Tera Sparks from O’Fallon. Girl Scouts’ National Young Women of Distinction award recognizes exceptional Girl Scout Gold Award recipients who have demonstrated remarkable leadership skills and a dedicated effort to activate change and make the world a better place. Up to three nominees for the honor are accepted from councils across the nation, with 10 finalists selected by Girl Scouts of the USA. Girls selected as National Young Women of Distinction receive college scholarships and opportunities to be involved in various national Girl Scouts and leadership events.

Emily Fuhler earned her Girl Scout Gold Award for working with The Covering House, a St. Louis based nonprofit that serves young female victims of sexual trafficking. Alexandra Lloyd earned her Girl Scout Gold Award working with MindsEye to produce radio shows for blind teens. Tera Sparks earned her Girl Scout Gold Award by creating an electronic database and map of O’Fallon Cemetary.  The girls were selected by a panel for their outstanding project, leadership skills, committment to community service and dedication to the ideals of Girl Scouting.

Watch for more news about GSSI’s National Young Women of Distinction nominees!

Fourteen GSSI Girl Scouts Receive the Trifecta Award

Girl Scouts were shining stars during Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois’ (GSSI) All That Glitters Award ceremony on March 28, 2015 at Rend Lake Resort in Whittington, Illinois. Each year, the banquet recognizes Girl Scouts from across southern Illinois who achieve significant accomplishments in community service and leadership. This year, GSSI recognized girls with the Girl Scout Trifecta Award, which honors GSSI Girl Scouts who have earned the Girl Scout Bronze Award, Girl Scout Silver Award and the Girl Scout Gold Award.

2015 GSSI Trifecta Award recipients:

Katie Albert - Troop #387, Waterloo
Elizabeth Arend, Troop #17, Highland
Lainey Brown, Troop #915, O'Fallon
Kaylynn Clement, Troop #915, O'Fallon
Kaitlyn Frick, Troop #46, Edwardsville
Megan Kraus, Troop #332, Waterloo
Alexandra Lloyd – Troop #1123, O’Fallon

Jordan Larusso – Troop #551, Edwardsville
Tessa Miller - Troop #8303, Red Bud 

Samantha Mitchell – Troop #8174, Carbondale

Caitlynn Rosenberg – Troop #915, O’Fallon

Tera Sparks – Troop #915, O’Fallon

Kathryn Stacy – Troop #915, Shiloh
Krista VanDriel - Troop #915, O'Fallon

Tera Sparks from O'Fallon Earns the Girl Scout Gold Award

 

Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois (GSSI) is pleased to announce that Tera Sparks from O’Fallon has received the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive.

 For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Tera created a repository of all the headstones and markers in the O’Fallon City Cemetery and placed them online so city residents and friends could easily find the grave locations. As part of her Gold Award project, she made a map, took a photo of each headstone, compared it to city records and documented all known data about the deceased as well as any inscriptions on the headstone. All of this information was then uploaded to the O’Fallon City website for anyone to use. In the future, O’Fallon GEO Information Services will keep the database updated.

According to Tera, the beauty of her project is that anyone, anywhere in the world could easily find who is buried in the O’Fallon City Cemetery. “For example, if a person knew that 50 years ago her aunt lived in O’Fallon, he or she could sit at a café in England and find his or her aunt’s gravesite, a photo of her headstone and any other inscriptions,” Sparks added.

 “The most successful part of my Girl Scout Gold Award project was creating the spreadsheet with all of the information I had collected,” Tera said. “For me, this was what my project was all about, preserving information for my generation and for future generations.”

 Tera is the daughter of Eric and Michelle Sparks from O’Fallon. She is a senior at Illinois Math and Science Academy. After graduation, she plans to attend Georgia Institute of Technology and major in Nuclear Engineering. She has been a Girl Scout for 11 years.

The Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can earn, recognizes a Girl Scout's commitment to excellence as she develops skills and values to meet present and future challenges in her life. To earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, a Girl Scout Senior or Girl Scout Ambassador must design and carry out a project that fulfills a need within a girl’s community, creates change, and is sustainable. The project must be completed with a suggested minimum of 80 hours of work. Only about 6 percent of eligible girls earn the prestigious Gold Award.