Senior Receives Scout’s Highest Honor
Recent Laguna Beach High School graduate Ashley Brown was awarded the nation’s highest Girl Scout honor, the Gold Award, for developing an educational campaign to promote local residential gardens.
The Gold Award, attained by only 5 percent of U.S. Girl Scouts annually, is the culmination of a demanding process where the Scout identifies an issue and creatively addresses it with a lasting project.
Brown combined her love for gardening with lessons learned in her LBHS science class about the damaging effects of global change on the environment.
She addressed the issue of climate change by demonstrating how residents could reduce their carbon footprint by creating a home garden.
Brown and fellow scout Marisa Schatz learned about sustainable practices during a nine-month internship with Scott Tenney, owner of Bluebird Canyon Farms, a 15-acre farm and education center in Laguna Beach.
Their hands-on experience and research culminated in the design of five brochures covering greenhouse, composting, aquaponics/hydroponics, poultry keeping and beekeeping.
Funds earned from cookie sales were used to print 300 brochures, distributed to Top of the World Elementary School, the Laguna Beach Girl Scouts, and the Laguna Beach County Water District.
Brown leaves soon for Purdue University in Indiana where she intends to pursue an engineering degree.
Oui! Scout Departs for France
Girl Scout alumnae Josie Goson, of Laguna Beach, recently received the Corinne Jeannine Schillings Foundation Award, a recognition available only to recipients of scouting’s highest Silver and Gold Awards.
The foundation preserves the memory of Girl Scout Corinne Schillings by providing supporting undergraduate college women in the study of languages and culture.
The foundation scholarship will help fund Goson’s study abroad in France. She was selected from among 115 applicants. Goson said scouting fostered her thirst for knowledge and confidence to venture to a foreign land for half a year.
She earned scouting’s top prize, the Gold Award, in 2014 for her project “EcoRest.” She partnered with several non-profits to improve the lives of the homeless community by providing them with crocheted sleeping mats.
Goson starts her junior year studying marketing and French at Southern Methodist University and will spend the first semester in France.
