Girl Scout Silver Awards 2017
2017 Silver Award
CHRISTINE PURSCHKE
TROOP 1203
SAMANTHA MURPHY & CLAIRE SILVERSTEIN
TROOP 2076
Helping Hands for Happy Homes
This Silver Award consisted of making kits for families moving out of Family Promise and into their new homes. The kits included basic kitchen essentials like pots/pans, mixing bowls, Tupperware, strainers, sponges, dish soap, and a utensil set. These items were all put in a plastic bin for storage. The bins also contained easy, affordable, kid-friendly recipes in a cookbook so families could bond together while cooking. The bins, which would eliminate the need to purchase these items, would help the families moving out to find financial stability. This would then help ease the process of readjusting to their new housing.
2017 Silver Award
CIARA DOHERTY AND MAYA RANJI
TROOP 2076
Project ECLC
We knew we wanted to work with kids and bring awareness to an underserved population. In talking to friends and neighbors we realized that a lot of people don’t know what ECLE does, whom they serve or that it is right here in Chatham. ECLC is a school that serves kids with special needs and it is located right behind Chatham Borough Hall. We started by contacting Fran Ryder, the school director. She loved our plan of throwing a 100-day party for the kids and for raising awareness of the school at the Farmer’s Market. We set up a table at the market on two Saturdays in the fall. We educated market-goers about ECLE and collected generous donations. We also held a bake sale. Then we planned and executed a really fun 100-day party using the funds we raised. The kids loved it! We also were able to donate a bunch of much-needed school supplies to the teachers. In addition, we mad a one-page flyer about ECLE that they can use to education people at future events.
2017 Silver Award
ALYSSA PAONE & AERIN ZUCCHI
TROOP 1203
KATE ZIEGLER
TROOP 2076
Kids Helping Kids on the Green
Alyssa, Kate and Aerin, all of Chatham, focused their Silver Award efforts on raising money for sporting equipment, toys, games, books, diapers, and baby wipes for Children on the Green, a non-profit nursery school and daycare center in Morristown, NJ. A bake sale and two Mr. A fun and games parties for younger scouts were the fundraisers that the three girls planned and supervised. After communicating with the co-director of Children on the Green, Alyssa, Kate and Aerin delivered a vanload of equipment to the school and spent a day playing games, making crafts, reading books, and sharing snacks with the pre-K class.
2017 Silver Award
AVA TESORIERO & AMANDA WILLIAMS
TROOP 2215
A+ Supplies
Ava and Amanda collected over 1,000 individual school supplies and created the “Student Supply Closet” to help Port of Entry Students/English Learners of School #15 in Paterson, NJ have access to free school supplies. Many of these students come from less fortunate families and they don’t have money for even basic supplies for learning and homework. Students will be able to visit this supply closet and choose necessary items (pencils, pens, notebooks, loose-leaf paper, folders, scissors, glue, etc.) as needed throughout the school year.
2017 Silver Award
SHANNON GILFILLAN, GRACE TOSCANO, & AVA VOIGHT
TROOP 2215
Helping Hands
Shannon, Grace and Ava chose to help children and families affected by homelessness through volunteer work at Homeless Solutions in Morris County. They volunteered over several months with the children at the shelter and helped with Game Nights, Lunch Prep and Serve, holiday gift-wrapping, organized a birthday party and conducted a donation drive for needed items. They plan to continue to raise awareness about homelessness and help those affected by it.
2017 Silver Award
EVELYN TOMARO – JULIETTE
Garden Terrace Lesson in a Box
Evelyn worked with Garden Terrace Nursing Home in Chatham, New Jersey. She created a reusable lesson plan and music list to teach residents about Bach, Chopin, and Telemann. She then did a presentation for the residents about these composers and performed pieces on piano and oboe by the composers. Included in the lesson plan were posters and printed materials that could be reused by the residents at a later date. Because of the relationship Evelyn made with Garden Terrace, she now performs weekly at the nursing home spreading joy to each resident she encounters.
2017 Silver Award
MEGAN ALPEOWITZ
TROOP 2076
KATIE CAVINESS
TROOP 104
Hands and Hears for ECLC
Hands and Hearts for ECLE was a joint collaboration project between the School District of the Chatham’s and the ECLE Special Needs School designed to show the students that everyone shares the same feelings and fears. To help emphasize this, the students from third grade at Milton Avenue School and Washington Avenue School (250 in total) wrote a fear that they had about the upcoming school year on a cutout of their hand, and they also wrote an encouraging statement on a cutout of a heart. The ECLE students then created collages with the hands and hears, and in the process, discovered that they are just the same as other children their age, which, in turn, helps them cope with their own fears. Not only did our program lift the self-esteem and self-confidence of the ECLC students, it also initiated a new friendship, between the school for future events.
2017 Silver Award
SAMANTHA TEISCH
TROOP 1981
Books into the Hands of Kids
Samantha collected 1,216 books and delivered then to the Dionne Warwick Institute in East Orange. In this school, 5% of the students are homeless and many of them do not have access to books at home. Some of the books were used to expand the selection in the library and the remaining books were given to the students to have at home.
2017 Silver Award
BRIDGET EVELETH & JEMMA THORNE
TROOP 1016
ECLC Crafts and Connections
Jemma and Bridget donated their time to help ouyt at evening craft classes for adults with special needs. Normally, with only one person running the class, they complete tow projects over the course of six classes. With the girls’ help, the students were able to complete three projects including one big string art project, which took three of the six classes. The girls were also able to solicit donations of all needed craft supplies for these projects, saving the program much needed money. Throughout the session, the students became much more socially comfortable with both of the girls and new friends within the class, and the girls will continue to help out at these night classes and other ECLC events.
2017 Silver Award
KATE DONSKY & KERRI MCNELIS
TROOP 1016
Read it Forward
The Girl Scouts, Kate and Kerri, worked with Reach Out and Read, a program that gives young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together. Kate and Kerri used various techniques to collect books, including having several book drives at their town’s elementary and high schools, giving out flyers to their neighbors, sending emails to friends and family and conducting a book collection at a local Easter Egg Hunt. The girls ended up collection of 1,100 books. They delivered 100 books to a doctor’s office in East Orange and about 1,050 books to a clinic at St. Barnabas Hospital. These books will go to children in low-income families in which the parents cannot afford to buy their kids’ books.
2017 Silver Award
CLAIRE TUNNY
TROOP 104
ROYCE ANKEL & KAITLIN OSUCHA
TROOP 1203
Family Promise Christmas Party
For our Silver Project, we knew in the beginning that we wanted to do a topic involving children. After coming up with ideas we heard about Family Promise. Immediately we set up a meeting with a member at Family Promise who proposed the idea of running the children’s holiday party all by ourselves. Of course we agreed! We organized games, including bingo, limbo, and pin the nose on the snowman. We also included crafts such as ornament making, and wreath decorating. In addition to that we had a secret Santa gift table, where kids could pick presents for their family, and a reading or sticker nook for the smaller children who were attending the party. All in all, we had a really great experience with the Silver Award because it taught us many skills like talking to adults or sending out emails and it brought us closer to our community and neighboring communities.
2017 Silver Award
KATIE CARRACIOLO, PEYTON MCGARRY & MELISSA MORAN
TROOP 1016
ANNABEL NEUNER
TROOP 1203
One Step Forward
Our Silver Award Project was working with the Apostle House, a women and children’s shelter in Newark, NJ. We conducted a sheet and bath towel drive and collected outdoor toys to refurbish their backyard. In addition, we hosted 2 events for the children and mothers at the shelter. Our first event was a Halloween party where we collected donated costumes for the children and then got a music together teacher to donate her time to do a class for the children. Second we hosted an Easter party with a puppet show and Easter egg hunt.
2017 Silver Award
ELISE RUGGIERO (with DANIELLE FERNANDEZ)
TROOP 1981
Bridging the Generations Through Music
With personal experience of visiting loved ones in the Livingston, NJ CareOne nursing home and rehabilitation center, the girls were inspired to use their musical talents to improve the quality of life for senior citizens. Elise and Danielle observed that the presence of youth and music instantly improved the moods, demeanor, and social interactions of the residents. For the girls, the project’s goal was to offer a series of mid-week duet performances using a variety of instruments, researching and transposing music selections, and intergenerational socialization opportunities. At the completion of the project the girls gifted the CareOne residents with a much-needed portable white board for future music/social events.
2017 Silver Award
GRACE NUGENT
TROOP 1981
Mud Room for Family Promise
Grace designed and built a mud room at Family Promise in Morris Plains, a day center for people without homes, where they can create a resume, job hunt, and get rides to interviews. The clients were in need of a space to call their own, to organize their belongings, such as their backpacks, coats and shores. Grace designed and built cubbies, hooks and shelves to provide personal space for people who have little space to call their own.
2017 Silver Award
GRACE ZINN
TROOP 2076
Towels for Foster Children
Over 400 children do not sleep in their own beds each night in Morris and Sussex counties. They are victims of abuse and neglect and have been taken from their homes to live in foster care. The simple joys of childhood are not simple for these kids. For my Girl Scout Silver Award project, I worked with CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Morris an Sussex Counties to collect and give 90 of these children a new pool or beach towel of their own this summer. As an added bonus, CASA gained another volunteer from my community outreach and awareness campaign.