Two Girls Scouts from Mineola Reach Gold Award

While some high schools now require a few hours of community service for graduation, none go as far as the Girl Scouts who earn the Gold Award.

This year Melissa Walsh and Celina Zapiti of Mineola join the record number of 121 Girl Scouts in Nassau County that have woven a minimum of 80 hours of community service into their busy schedules. These young women developed Gold Award community action projects that address social issues in their community or promote acts of kindness and goodwill throughout Nassau County. Their efforts earned these girls the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor that a young woman can achieve in Girl Scouting.

The Gold Award project helps high school-aged Girl Scouts develop leadership skills and explore various career paths. The Gold Awards require up to a 3-year commitment from each Girl Scout. It affords the teen the opportunity to learn about arts and humanities, cultural and global relations, personal well-being, technology and science, environmental concerns and many of the innumerable issues facing young women and the world today.  

Walsh’s Gold Award project addressed the difficulty in choosing a career. She felt that by having a career path in mind, high school students would be able to choose applicable courses that would prepare them for their future. She presented a career fair for St. Aidan’s School which featured speakers from various careers and who spoke to the students about their jobs. She also created handouts for the students that would give more information on this important topic. She is a junior at Kellenberg Memorial High School, where she is a member of Sodality, Catholics Reaching Out Spreading Spirituality, the Student Organization and Science Olympiad. She is also an altar server at her church.

Zapiti designed her Gold Award project to help the students at her school gain a better understanding of the deaf community. Working with an advisor from the Mill Neck School for the Deaf, she developed lesson plans and activities and then ran a series of workshops. She taught her classmates the basics of American Sign Language and gave them some insights into deaf culture. She is a junior at Sacred Heart Academy, where she is a member of the speech and debate club and in the band. Outside of school, she volunteers at a Hofstra summer camp program, takes art classes and is also an active member of her church.

The Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors between ages 15-18 were honored with a ceremony on June 12 at in Garden City. In addition to the Girl Scout ceremony, on June 21, Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano presented the girls, along with their Eagle Scout counterparts from Boy Scouts, with certificates for their achievements at the  in Mineola. Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray also honored Girl Scout Gold Award recipients and Eagle Scouts on June 3 in an event at Levy Preserve.