Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois (GSSI) is pleased to announce that Josefina Pimentel from Carbondale has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive.
For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, called Creative Writing: Express Your Dreams, Josefina held several creative writing clinics for 55 children at Unity Point School, the Carbondale Library and the Boys and Girls Club of Carbondale. Josefina said she wanted to pass on her love of writing to other youth living in the Carbondale area.
“Through my Girl Scout Gold Award Project, I had the opportunity to work with children from many different circumstances: wealthy and low income, international and local, boys and girls, etc. Working with them and getting to see their faces light up when they were proud of their writing was an amazing experience. I also learned better time management skills and how to be a leader and role model for children,” Josefina said.
Josefina is the daughter of Susan Walch-Pimentel and Ed Pimentel. She will graduate from Carbondale Community High School in 2017 and 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 5 percent of eligible girls earn the prestigious Gold Award.
