The youths grew up together and participated in Troop 1101
By Nancy Sawyer
Three Seal Beach youths recently earned the Girl Scout Gold Award.
The girls, members of Troop 1101, Seal Beach Service Unit, all grew up together in the same Seal Beach neighborhood and were girl scouts together for over nine years but all graduated from different high schools in June 2012.
Kealani Jensen, a member of a local youth orchestra and a graduate of Hope Christian Academy, Samantha Sawyer, a graduate with top academic honors from Los Alamitos High School and Kaylie Welch, who qualified for the California Masters Meet for Pole Vault and is a graduate of Mater Dei High School. All three recently received the Gold Award, Girl Scouts highest honor, for their outstanding dedication to community service.
For her Gold Award, Kealani sought to fulfill a need for her local community by contributing to the local Mary Wilson Library collection. The library was in need of infant and toddler books. Kealani worked with the library staff to coordinate the procurement of new books to fill the need.
Kealani will be attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, majoring in architecture. She is the daughter of Bev and Jeff Jensen.
Samantha had a vision of her community from a global perspective. She was able to travel to communities of the Andes Mountain in Peru and upon her return created an educational program for a local Los Alamitos Unified School District elementary school. The program was titled “Building a bridge” and through education and the creation of a pen pal program introduced the students to a world outside of their neighborhood.
In addition, much needed school supplies were collected for an elementary school outside Cusco, Peru. Samantha will be attending the University of California, Davis, majoring in History with an emphasis in European History and a minor in Art and Spanish. She is the daughter of Nancy and Michael Sawyer.
Kaylie combined her involvement with her church, the Rotary Club and her love of Mexico to create an eco friendly program. By utilizing all her resources she was able to bring water purifying systems to rural Mexico. Kaylie helped assemble WPIs (Water Pasteurization Indicators), distribute them and educate the village population regarding their use. Kaylie’s project continues to give on a global perspective as her Pastor shared Kaylie’s project with a mission group headed to Africa and they will be taking the water purifying systems with them to distribute to the villages they visit in Africa.
Kaylie is currently a freshman at the University of Alabama, majoring in nursing. She is the daughter of Barb and Greg Welch. Kealani, Samantha and Kaylie received their award at a recent ceremony with a celebration dinner at Finbar’s Italian Kitchen in Seal Beach, The Gold Award is presented to only 5.4% of Girl Scouts nationwide. To earn this award, girls spend two to three years developing and implementing community service projects that will make their world a better place. For more information, visit Girl Scouts of Orange County at www.gscoc.org.
