With graduation roughly two weeks away, 3 La Jolla Higher College seniors have accomplished one more purpose they’ve been operating toward: the Girl Scout Gold Award.
Ashlyn Brunette, Sophie Hochberg and Samantha Ponticello have completed projects for the Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouts, which calls for every single girl who attempts it to recognize a dilemma, strategize a strategy to address it and conduct 80 hours of neighborhood service to execute the strategy.
The 3 girls — every single of whom has been in Girl Scouts because kindergarten — also had to perform with a mentor, place collectively and lead a group and create a final report on their projects.
“There’s a lot of leadership and teamwork involved,” Hochberg mentioned.
The awards ceremony is in June.
Ashlyn Brunette
To earn her Gold Award, Brunette presented a lacrosse camp for about 50 elementary- and middle college-age girls in her neighborhood following discovering that through the COVID-19 pandemic, youngsters she babysat felt isolated from pals.
“[Their] parents have been noticing these unfavorable mental overall health effects,” Brunette mentioned.
She targeted the lacrosse camp for girls close to “the age exactly where I was joining sports teams and meeting new folks,” she mentioned. The girls have been “missing a crucial time [for] joining sports.”
The camp taught lacrosse fundamentals and supplied “sit-down conversations with the girls about standard elements of mental overall health, like help groups, strain, managing time” and much more, Brunette mentioned.
Brunette, who played lacrosse for La Jolla Higher, mentioned she received good feedback from parents and plans to repeat the camp this summer season ahead of she leaves to attend UCLA.
Sophie Hochberg
Hochberg, who will attend Vanderbilt University, is interested in majoring in psychology and wanted to strategy her Gold Award project in that field, tying in her like of ice skating.
The outcome was a “mental overall health boot camp” for student-athletes.
“I realized that mental illness for sports players … is not a thing that is definitely addressed as a society,” she mentioned.
Hochberg gathered a sports psychologist, a meditation instructor and a nutritionist to speak to a group of about 25 of her peers about mental illness especially for student-athletes — which includes techniques to cope with and overcome it.
“Everyone talked about their personal experiences if they wanted,” she mentioned.
Hochberg shared the info for 4 weeks at a booth at the La Jolla Open Aire Marketplace, providing out pamphlets with a summary of the tips gleaned at the camp.
Samantha Ponticello
Ponticello designed a web site to guide folks following a loved one particular suffers a stroke.
The web site, afulllifeafterstroke.com, consists of guidelines for identifying the indicators of a stroke and tips for assisting somebody by way of the healing approach.
Ponticello was moved to commence the project following her grandmother had a stroke.
The web site contains almost everything Ponticello and her household discovered following the stroke, along with info from a stroke help individual.
She also hosted a booth at the Open Aire Marketplace to aid educate folks about the indicators of a stroke and produced posters illustrating the acronym Rapidly for face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty and time to get in touch with 911.
“I place these about La Jolla for folks to see,” she mentioned.
Ponticello mentioned stroke victims and their household members would strategy her at the industry to create down the web site address.
Ponticello, who will attend Syracuse University, mentioned she will update the web site as she learns much more. ◆
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