"The second graders planted close to 200 plants for a rain garden.
Armed
with shovels, flowers and a lot of passion, the scouts were on a
mission to plant a rain garden. It’s part of their 100-year anniversary
service project. The garden acts like an environmental shelter —
capturing rain water from the gutters and stopping run-off from going
into the sewers.
The Root Pike Watershed Initiative helped fund
the project. “It’s wonderful. We get both another rain garden and an
opportunity to educate the next generation,” Root Pike Watershed
Initiative Executive Director Susan Greenfield said." From the GSUSA
Blog
Wow!
What a great service project that could be morphed into a great Silver
Award Project! These Brownies really did something meaningful in their
community!!!
So,
how could it have been a Silver Award Project? The small team of 2 or 3
girls could have learned in their Breathe Journey that plants really do
clear the air. Also, that flooding and wasting water is not a good
thing for anyone. They could have done some research to learn more
about the needs in their community.
Discover the Issue: Run-off water causing damage and waste
Root
Cause: No way to stop water run-off in specific places - why is that?
Lack of funds? Lack of volunteers at the Watershed? Lack of knowledge
on the part of the community?
Connect
with the need: Identify an agency/agencies to partner with. Find a
location that has the need. Figure out if there is anything else going
on in the community to address the issue? Find out if there are others
who share concern about this issue, and ask if they can be on the team.
Determine how much money it would take to make a difference.
Take
Action: Make a plan! Each girl has leadership over specific pieces:
creating education pieces, identifying native plants to use, training
the team, working with the non-profit agency, etc. And work the plan!
Be sure that each girl has the opportunity to lead!
Sustainability:
Set it up to turn over to the agency if at all possible. Or have the
troop adopt the garden as their project for the year, hopefully turning
it over to another entity down the road. Remember, they do not have to
ensure sustainability, as does the Gold Award Project.
Global:
Talk about what it means! What if every community planted a rain
garden? How would that affect our community? the county? the state?
Again, it's not planning for global buy-in, but it does need to be a
discussion about how others could do the same thing to make a difference
in the world.
