The Gold Award represents the highest achievement in Girl Scouts, and Lake Highlands Troop 1096 is well on its way to scoring some of it.
According Girl Scouts of the USA, only about 5% of eligible girls make the attempt to earn the Gold Award, but that's not deterring one local group, whose members have been together several years.
Now sophomores at Lake Highlands High School and Richardson High School, I visited recently with the girls about the video they created, entitled Words Burn.
"Our troop was formed in early elementary school, but a few of us joined up in middle school," said Kelsey Buckley, a 10th grader at LHHS.
"The video was a requirement for one of the steps towards getting our Gold Award."
"Our assignment was to make a video that empowered girls, so we chose the topic of bullying."
The first step for the girls was sharing their own experiences with one another.
"Thankfully, none of us have ever been bullied to this extreme," said Kelsey.
"But we did discuss the way that sometimes jokes can go too far, or how people often throw around very serious and unfunny comments like they mean nothing – such as 'kill yourself.'"
Which led to the title of their work: Words Burn.
For that the girls credit Janie Garza, a Lake Highlands resident and 10th grader at Richardson High School.
"We came up with the idea to burn the sticky notes as a symbol of the girl letting go of the things said about her," Janie told me.
"So I flipped the idea. Instead of burning words, it was words burn."
"It fit really well with the video and the ideas we were trying to get across."
The girls are hoping to earn those Gold Awards by next year and, in addition to the community service projects necessary to complete the process, already have more videos in the works.
"Joking around about topics that may seem innocent at the time can hurt people in ways you can't even imagine," said Kelsey.
Members of Girl Scout Troop 1096 are: Shannon Birkhoff, Kelsey Buckley, Stephanie Estrera, Janie Garza, Meredith Herbst, Andrea Pickett, Katie Samuelsen, Sydney Stephens (the featured girl in the video) and Sarah Wernsman.
