56 Young Women Earn Girl Scouting's Highest Honor: The Girl Scout Gold Award

Accomplished astronomer, Quakertown-native Jennifer Donley, Ph.D. is keynote speaker at Achievement Ceremony on Saturday

WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., May 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 50 young women will be presented with Girl Scouting's highest honor for its girl members—the Girl Scout Gold Award—at Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania's 2010 Achievement Ceremony today (Saturday, May 8) from 1-4pm at the Philadelphia Marriott West in West Conshohocken (111 Crawford Avenue).

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The Gold Award honorees are 56 Girl Scouts from across the Council's nine-county service region: Berks (7 girls), Bucks (5), Carbon (1), Chester (19), Delaware (7), Lehigh (1), Montgomery (8), and Northampton (5) Counties.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is reserved for girls who complete rigorous leadership projects by committing a minimum of 65 hours to their planning, implementation and completion. The seven-step process includes a project proposal for approval by an award committee, which meets an expressed community need and represents a first-time, "stretch" initiative for the girl. Gold Award projects are often three to six months in the making. Approximately 6 percent of Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors earn the Gold Award. (See Editor's Notes for a list of representative projects.)

Also on Saturday, dozens of other girls will be presented the Graduating Senior Girl Scout Scholarship; academic and civic awards; and the 2010 Graduating Senior certificate.

The keynote speaker for the Achievement Ceremony is Quakertown-native Jennifer L. Donley, Ph.D. A former Fulbright Scholar, Donley is the Giacconi Postdoctoral Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the home of the Hubble Space Telescope. Donley earned her B.S. from The Pennsylvania State University, and her Master degree and Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Arizona. A life-long Girl Scout, Donley was a co-leader for a Girl Guide troop in Australia during a one-year research program. As a graduate student, Donley helped develop an Astronomy Camp for Girl Scout leaders from around the country. She remains an active volunteer by leading astronomy-based activities in middle-school classrooms.

Girl Scouting's mission is to build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place. Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania is the state's largest girl-serving organization, with more than 41,000 girls and 14,000 volunteers in Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia counties.  Approximately 80 percent of women in leadership and executive roles in the U.S. and 70 percent of U.S. Congresswomen are Girl Scout alumnae.

Representative Gold Award projects include:

• Design, funding and installation of a mosaic to replace worn brick on a pavilion, as part of community-wide effort to renovate Burpee Park in Bucks County
• A detailed self-guided tour of the second-floor at the Grange Estate in Delaware County, to enable volunteers with physical limitations to avoid climbing the stairs to serve visitors
• Full production of a localized video to support the North Penn United Way's annual campaign
• Installation of a vegetable garden at a Chester County elementary school, and a plan to sustain it, to teach youngsters about science and healthy eating
• A mentoring and workshop program to build confidence, esteem and self-respect for middle-school girls in Montgomery County
• A transitional writing program to prepare a group of Northampton County 5th-graders for middle-school research assignments
• Recruitment and organization of a cross-county mission team, which harvested 50 pounds of produce for a Berks County soup kitchen and collaborated with a church in Center City Philadelphia for a 4-day project
• Support of the music program at a Lehigh County elementary school through collection of musical instruments and introductory instruction
• A multi-faceted, collaborative  project to promote children's literacy in Philadelphia (the honoree worked with an international agency in Brooklyn, NY to collect books for children in Rwanda)
• A handmade and hand-painted table and chairs for the children's reading room at a Carbon County library (the project complemented and built upon a jungle-themed mural that was part of an earlier Gold Award project)

SOURCE Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania