Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois (GSSI) is pleased to
announce that Shelby Wratchford from Fults has received the Girl Scout Gold
Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive.
For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Shelby
shared her love of art by providing a program called Mornings with the Masters: Art
and History Experiences for Middle-schoolers in her community. Shelby said she took this on as her Girl
Scout Gold Award project after learning that art education in America’s middle
and high schools is disappearing. “I
wanted to provide students with unique opportunities to explore their artistic
interests and abilities,” Wratchford said.
According to Shelby, she created fun, hands-on art sessions where students were introduced to a certain period of art history, such as Cubism, and the great masters associated with those movements. “Then, students worked with a variety of art materials such as chalk, clay and oil pastels to create their own versions of the artists’ works,” she added.
“By completing my Girl Scout Gold Award, I learned a great deal about developing and implementing a plan. I know that these skills, along with those I learned during my 13 years in Girl Scouts, will serve me well in the future as a college student, an employee and beyond,” Wratchford said.
Shelby is the daughter of Phil and Jamie Wratchford. She is a freshman at Webster University majoring in art and French. She has been a Girl Scout for 13 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.
