What will we do this year? Whatever it is, it will be great!

Wow! What a year! The girls just bridged to Seniors. I am so proud of them! We had a full year working very hard to achieve the Silver Award! We had fun at Camp Bernie for Camporee and look forward to some good fun and downtime.
Our Silver Award summary...

The girls in our troop recognized that starting around 5th and 6th grade there are many children affected by depression. They wanted to do something to help prevent this from recurring.  With the guidance of leaders, parents and the school counselor they decided to find a way to strengthen the family bond by offering local resources to families.

The girls planned and executed a Family Health and Wellness Expo.  They contacted local organizations to come meet the families of Flemington and inform them as to what the individual organization has to offer families.  The organizations invited address topics such as counseling, nutrition, fitness and fun. They all have something to offer to help increase the family bond.

During the event we had speakers and presentations including a healthy cooking demo, karate, dance, a speaker from Al-Ateen and a female officer from the Flemington Boro speaking on bullying and wise choices.  We also offered refreshments and gave out 17 door prizes - all generously donated by local business.

After the expo, 5 books were created that include flyers and information on the organizations that attended. These books were placed at locations including Family Success Center, the libraries and Catholic Charities. 

Those who were able to attend the expo commented on how much they enjoyed it.  A member of one of the guest organizations commented that she didn't know Girl Scouts could do something like this and stated that she would like to do this as well.  The guest organizations had a rare chance to gather and network among themselves enabling them to give honest referrals to other services.  The guests and organizations also asked us to hold this annually... we can only offer to pass it down to another troop for a Bronze Award, but it's nice to see that there is desire to keep this going.

We learned a lot during the year it took us to bring this project together!  We learned that our word means a lot... if you say you are going to do something, you have to do it timely and well.  That it's easier to "just do it" than to spend time worrying about what needs to be done. That it's OK to say I'm not comfortable doing that, or that I don't have the time to commit.  We learned about the paperwork needed to hold a function and how good it feels to do something of value.

We don't always know the effects of our actions. Hopefully we helped at least one family, whether directly or indirectly... if we did that, then we achieved success.

We are a Flemington/Raritan Twp 7th grade Cadette Girl Scout troop. 

Girl Scouts is a community service based organization. Our goals are to make short-term and long-term changes in our community while having fun.  It's great to see the girls plan and execute special projects while building confidence and self-esteem!  And when we're not working on a service project, our goal is to try new things and have fun!


As we enter this year our troop will be finishing our aMAZE journey with a presentation on bullying. We plan to earn a few badges and enjoy some nice trips/outings. As we approach the end of the year we will seek approval on our Silver Award projects that we will tackle next year.

As a 5th grade Junior Girl Scout troop, we accomplished a lot!


 We sold cookies, went ice skating, enjoyed the "Sweetheart Dance" & enjoyed the Nutcracker ballet and after-show activity hour.

We have earned the following patches...Girl Scouting in the USA, Making Hobbies, Math Whiz & Aerospace.

This year we earned the "Get Moving!" Journey award! We learned about many, many different types of energy and planned and executed a successful battery recycling drive during which we educated the public on ways to recycle batteries in the future.  This Journey was a prerequisite to our next big project...the Bronze Award!

Our mighty troop of 4 girls finished the year out by assisting the Flemington-Raritan Park Committee organize a park restoration day at Morales Trails on Capner Street.  With the help of local Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts from Pack 194 and the sponsorship of Rita's, ShopRite and McDonald's, we managed to fill-in eroded paths by moving large rocks and shared refreshments with our workers after. Great job everyone!

http://www.gshnj.org/