Meredith Layfield from O'Fallon Earns the Girl Scout Gold Award

Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois (GSSI) is pleased to announce that Meredith Layfield has received the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive. 

For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Meredith was inspired by her cousin Gabby, who was hospitalized in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.  Gabby was predicted to live a mere eight weeks, but has now grown to be four years old.  From her cousin’s experience, Meredith learned that newborn intensive care units are unable to regulate their own body temperature and need hats to keep them warm.  However, the units often lack funding to provide hats and do not receive enough donations to fill the need – so Meredith rallied her community to help.

Meredith completed her project, which she named Gabby’s Gift, as a Senior at O’Fallon Township High School. Starting out, she didn’t know how to crochet – but she didn’t let that stop her.  She taught herself from a book well enough that she was able to then teach others how to make the tiny hats for hospitalized infants.   In all, she was able to donate 55 crochet hats to Children’s Hospital’s NICU.   She also spread awareness of the need for more hats through the community and started a Facebook Page to help promote a more widespread campaign.

Along with helping hospitalized infants, Meredith also gained new confidence in her own abilities.  “I learned how to lead those I view as adults,” she said. “Before, I was fine leading my peers, but through this project, I learned how to lead people who are older than my peer group.

Meredith is the daughter of David and Betsy Layfield.  She is currently a freshman at Columbus State Community College, where she is majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. 

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.

Hannah Pavlisin From Lebanon Earns the Girl Scout Gold Award

 

 

Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois (GSSI) is pleased to announce that Hannah Pavlisin has received the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive. 

For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Hannah wanted to help reduce the fear and isolation that many patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital patients face by providing a fun event to take them away from their troubles for the night.   Her event, named Dare to Dream, offered hands-on activities, fun demonstrations and special guests.

“I’ve always loved interacting with kids and in college I will be studying Nursing,” said Hannah. “It seemed like a perfect fit for me and the hard part was narrowing down all of my ideas!”

First, Hannah transformed a playroom and cafeteria at Children’s Hospital into outer space and created a giant cardboard “above the clouds” castle for children to enjoy.  Next, she set up stations for activities that included making play jet-packs to go along with the space theme, painting art canvasses, decorating cupcakes and creating photo frames.  She also arranged for local firemen, police officers, a pilot, a pastry chef, professional artists and Olympians to talk with children about their jobs, give demonstrations and take photos (to place in the kids’ new photo frames).  At the end of the night, all of the children got teddy bears to take back to their rooms.

Along with fulfilling her desire to cheer up hospitalized children, Hannah was also able to hone her leadership skills by earning her Girl Scout Gold Award.  “I learned so much about myself and working with others,” she said.  “While leadership has always came naturally to me, recruiting and directing those older than me was a new challenge.”

Hannah is the daughter of James and Pennie Pavlisin.  She is a GSSI Trifecta Award winner for earning her Girl Scout Bronze Award, Girl Scout Silver Award and Girl Scout Gold Award.   She is currently a senior at O’Fallon Township High School and plans to attend Bradley University to study Nursing in the fall.  

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.