Going for the Gold
Inspiration from the Net

By Tien

After spending several months on my Girl Scout Gold Award project, I presented it to the families at Interfaith Community Services. Interfaith is a nonprofit social service agency that helps the disadvantaged in our community. I decided that Interfaith would be the beneficiary of my project as I had worked with it in the past for my school's Key Club, and knew it to be a deserving institution.

My Inspiration

My project was inspired by a quote I read on the Internet: "50% of low-income children drop out of college." In an effort to lower this percentage, I tried to get children hooked on education at an early age, in the hope that they would be less likely to drop out of school later on.

How did I get kids excited about school? I decided to make 45 kits filling backpacks with school supplies. In addition, I made 15 "pampering" kits for the moms filled with books, hygiene items, and tea. Given that many of these children come from single-parent homes I'd hope the parents would appreciate both their kits, and the kids' kits, and share the excitement of education with the kids.

Fund-raising

How did I afford this project? At first I asked students at my school and members of the community for donations. But when I realized that it would be nowhere near enough to complete my project, I decided to ask for help from big companies in my area. After contacting nearly all the companies in my area, I realized that I needed to branch out even further if I wanted to meet my goals. I contacted hundreds of companies from all over the country asking for school supplies and/or monetary donations.

At the beginning, I found it extremely difficult to ask for donations from companies and to collect used school supplies from around my community. Although the hundreds of letters of rejection that I got from companies all around the nation discouraged me, the handful of enthusiastic donors inspired me to work even harder.

I Made a Difference!

When I received the evaluations back from the kids and mothers, my entire project became worthwhile. One mother wrote to me, "I am a single mother and I don’t make much money, so I was worried about getting my daughter the stuff she needed. It is such a blessing to us, what you've done."

I am grateful to Girl Scouting for giving me the opportunity to make a difference in a child's life.