
Earning the Girl Scout Gold Award requires girls to complete a significant and sustainable service project that demonstrates leadership, planning, and a commitment to community improvement. Each girl earning this distinct honor has dedicated a minimum of 80 hours to make their project a reality. The skills and experiences gained through this process are invaluable and can set applicants apart in the college admissions process and professionally.
To earn their Girl Scout Gold Awards, our members identified issues in their communities, took action, and found or created solutions to address real-life problems such as environmental sustainability, racial justice, challenges to mental and physical well-being, gender inequality in STEM, and more. Through their take-action projects, Gold Award Girl Scouts demonstrate the breadth of issues American teens feel are most prevalent in society today.
In addition, Girl Scouts of the USA awards annual Gold Award Scholarships that recognize one outstanding Gold Award Girl Scout per council each year. These girls have been selected because their project exemplifies the core components of the Gold Award, and they demonstrated extraordinary leadership to drive lasting change in their community and beyond.
We encourage you to review and celebrate with us the work of many of our Gold Award Girl Scouts as noted below. Be sure to revisit this web page periodically as it is updated.
Girl Scout Rebecca from Morristown earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Coming Clean About Cancer.
Rebecca raised awareness about how people care for those with cancer; she created and distributed pamphlets covering the basics of cancer, common treatments and tips, mental health, and lived experiences. Rebecca also utilized social media and held two information sessions to present this information and hold conversations about this important topic.
Girl Scout Phoebe from Morristown earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: First Aid Squad Reboot.
Phoebe provided essential support to her local volunteer First Aid Squad by redesigning their outdated website with more information regarding how to become a member, donate, or attend a class. An Instagram account was also created in order to reach younger generations and to bring more traffic to the new website.
Girl Scout Maddie from Sparta earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Career Decision Readiness for High Schoolers.
Maddie created and organized a Speed Networking Career Fair at her high school, hosting a variety of professionals in different fields. The fair was held during the school day, making it easier for students to attend and learn about career options they may not have been able to otherwise.
Girl Scout Liani from New Milford earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: It's Time to Log Off.
Liani’s project addresses the issue of screen addiction and anxiety through four educational sessions teaching participants about the harms of excessive screen time, along with a board game night to encourage lowered screen time. Liani also distributed educational pamphlets to over 200 people to help spread awareness about screen addiction.
Girl Scout Kerry from Mahwah earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Serenity Steps.
Kerry created a mindful labyrinth in her school as a space for her peers to engage in reflection and meditation, encouraging them to take a break from their daily pressures and connect with their thoughts in a peaceful setting. A QR code in the room included mental health resources such as quotes, calming music, and guided breath exercises.
Girl Scout Isabella from Glen Rock earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: The Coral- A Sensory Room for Children.
Isabella created a Sensory Room in an elementary school for children, particularly those with neurodevelopmental disorders, to help them deal with stress, or needed a place to take their mind off schoolwork.
Girl Scout Emma from Allendale earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Bending Back: Empowering Scoliosis Awareness.
Emma created educational videos discussing the symptoms and treatments of scoliosis, along with teaching students how to conduct proper check-ups. Emma met with school nurses in order to implement her educational videos into the health curriculum of two different schools.
Girl Scout Dana from Lyndhurst earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Better Environment, Better Tomorrow.
Dana’s project addressed the lack of education about our daily impact on the environment. In order to create awareness, Dana hosted a town-wide cleanup, shared crafts that reused objects that a typically disposed, and made pamphlets educating readers on how they can alter their lifestyle to protect the environment.
Girl Scout Danielle from Newton earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Little Readers – Future Leaders.
Danielle’s project addressed the importance of book access and reading in her community. Danielle partnered with local laundromats to set up “Little Laundromat Libraries,” providing a selection of 40 to 50 books for families to read while waiting. The project also held Book Adoption events and a Reading Buddies mentorship program.
Girl Scout Sofia from Upper Saddle River earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Sports Empowers Yourself.
Sofia hopes for a more positive sports environment, and to ensure that within her community she educated parents and coaches on positive reinforcement, realistic expectations, and prioritizing enjoyment over competition. Using advice from 17 different athletes, Sofia was able to create an educational video aimed at coaches.
Girl Scout Erin Rebecca from Hackettstown earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: St. Luke’s Blacktop Playground.
Erin Rebecca felt St. Luke’s preschool lacked a space for children to spend time outside. To help increase the children’s time spent outside, she created a play space with a variety of games for the children to play on.
Girl Scout Michelle from Pequannock earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Developing a STEM Sisterhood.
Michelle felt that many young girls were not being introduced to STEM early on. By meeting with various community members, Michelle created a website to showcase her findings along with fliers providing readers with STEM resources.
Girl Scout Grace from Wyckoff earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Woman in Business.
Grace created a club to addresses the lack of women in leadership position in the business field. Using her club, she created a safe space for the girls of Ramapo High School to learn about different fields of business, network with leading women in business, and create relationships with other members of the club.
Girl Scout Kathryn from North Warren earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Our Veterans’ Stories.
Kathryn honored veterans buried in her local cemetery by locating and identifying veterans and the wars they fought in. Kathryn created a map with the location of the veterans’ graves and marked their grave with a laminated number.
Girl Scout Emily from Ramsey earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Grace’s Upper Rooms.
Grace Church was lacking an organization system to their upper rooms, preventing church staff from efficiently accessing the items they need. Emily reshelved and reorganized these upper rooms through donating unused items and installing new shelving and storage units, allowing the Grace church community to have easy access to these rooms and their belongings.
Girl Scout Alyssa from New Milford earnedthe Girl Scout Gold Award for their project: Pollinators and Permaculture.
Ayssa’s educational presentation and workshops at the New Milford Library addressed the pollinator decline in her community. She discussed the importance of native plants, the dangers and alternatives to pesticides, companion planting, and methods to grow native plants in your own backyard.
Girl Scout Anna from Ridgewood earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for their project, Tech Savy Seniors: Empowering the Elderly in the Digital Age.
In a technology class, Anna taught seniors in her community various iPhone features by simplifying complex technology. Through handouts with simplistic visuals and step-by-step images, Anna was able to provide guidance for both easy and difficult tasks on the iPhone. Anna also centered part of her classes and pamphlets on accessibility issues such as hearing and vision loss, and taught seniors how to make their iPhones more accessible.
Girl Scout Alyssa from River Vale earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her project: Food Allergy Awareness.
Through a presentation and three informative YouTube videos, Alyssa educated her community on what it means to be allergic. She tackled common misconceptions, along with sharing a variety of facts and information on food allergies. She also shared how everyone can do their part in making their community safer for those with allergies, including participating the Teal Pumpkin Project.
Girl Scout Maria from Tenafly was our council's recipient of the 2025 GSUSA Gold Award Scholarship for her project: My Missing Playmate.
Maria curated a collection of children’s picture books to help young children, and their families, begin the difficult conversation around sibling loss—specifically, loss due to stillbirth. Her project addressed the lack of accessible, age-appropriate resources to support children like herself who grow up in families touched by this quiet, often unspoken grief.
Girl Scout Katelyn from Randolph was our council's recipient of the 2024 GSUSA Gold Award Scholarship for her project: Katelyn's Pages.
Inspired by her time spent as a young patient at The Valerie Center in Morristown and the great care and interaction she had with the Child Life Professionals, she wanted to give back through her Girl Scout Gold Award work to this incredible profession by making their jobs a little easier. Katelyn created a website (www.katelynspages.com), where she curated more than 1000 downloadable activities and videos for children that could be used in hospital settings.
Gold Award Girl Scout Sophia sought out to improve awareness of bone marrow donation and increase the number of stem cell donors with her project, Building the Registry. Inspired by her own mother’s need for a stem cell transplant and the journey to find a matching donor, Sophia campaigned to encourage fellow students to attend a swabbing event and register as donors. Her “Be the Match” presentations resulted in bringing more than 65 people to the event.
Gold Award Girl Scout Sofia raised awareness of pediatric cancer with her Dunk Cancer project and 3K event. She worked to educate her community about pediatric cancer and advocacy with the help of Grace Eline, a cancer survivor from the WITH Grace Initiative. Sofia set up a table at the event where attendees could make cards for pediatric cancer warriors and their families and attach them to care packages. She was able to collect enough items to donate 149 care packages to five different hospitals. In addition, she created a how-to- manual for hosting awareness events, which the WITH Grace organization now has on its website.
Gold Award Girl Scout Sarah created the Girls Speak program, which focused on the importance of building girls’ confidence and public speaking skills. She created and presented a series of workshops for girls to help them learn how to find their voices and confidently use them. Sarah convened a panel of professional women who noted the importance of public speaking in their careers and offered advice on how girls could gain confidence in their abilities to use their voices. She used social media and developed a website to promote and support her efforts, and trained girls and women to present Girls Speak programs of their own.
Gold Award Girl Scout Sofia promoted the work she did toward earning her Girl Scout Gold Award on her college application and was awarded a full scholarship to Ohio State University to be part of a Women in STEM program. For her take-action project, she used social media (Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram) to reach hundreds of girls interested in STEM fields and created a social networking space for them with women engineering students from various universities and professional women engineers from corporations. The networking platform allowed young girls to have direct access to inspiring professionals and ask questions about careers in STEM.
Gold Award Girl Scout Emma experienced the challenges of being hard of hearing and communicating with others while wearing a mask during the pandemic. Masks present serious challenges to members of the Deaf and hard of hearing community by hindering the ability to lip read or gauge facial expressions. Masks also hinder voice projection, which makes it difficult for those with hearing impairments to understand clearly what is being communicated. As part of her take-action project, Emma created an awareness campaign to help make more people conscious of this issue. She educated school and healthcare personnel, conveying to them the need to slow down and be patient with the hearing impaired, and encouraging them to speak clearly and project as much as possible when wearing a mask. In addition, she worked to encourage the hearing-impaired population to advocate for themselves and make others aware that they are hearing impaired, as well as to use various communication tools for more effective communication.
Gold Award Girl Scout Ava conducted a First Communion outfit swap for her take-action project. She collected donations of Communion outfits from the parish of St. Vincent's Martyr and brought them to a parish in need in her community. These outfits will be used year after year for children to borrow them and use them for their special day. She is hopeful that this idea will continue to expand to other parishes in need.
Gold Award Girl Scout Hansa chose her project given her passion for culture, and cultural inclusion. As a first-generation American, she often experienced the feeling of exclusion since her culture differs from many of her peers. “As an Indian-American, I have been raised with the beauty of culture and diversity around me, and wanted to share this with my community.” Her One Love Project promotes cultural inclusion, primarily through a lesson plan that is currently being used for children in grades 3-5. Through this project, Hansa created a video featuring a dozen children from her town, who were willing to spread the message of the One Love Project. Hansa’s project has reached almost every classroom at Bogert Elementary School in Upper Saddle River, and is actively being taught to Girl Scout troops around her county.
Gold Award Girl Scout Casey was interested in exploring how children who receive Occupational Therapy have been affected by the COVID-19 lockdown and lack of access to doctors’ appointments and therapy. Casey’s project was to create “take home” bags and a guidebook to support OT AT HOME for children and their parents. She worked with the Special Education Department at Clifton Public Schools to host a Make-and-Take activity night for OT patients and their parents.
Gold Award Girl Scout Ella focused her project on the dwindling number of native butterflies in her community. Addressing the issue of conservation, Ella reintroduced native plants that the local butterflies relied on, and distributed more of these plants to members of the community for planting in their own gardens.
Gold Award Girl Scout Alexa addressed mental health and wellness with her take-action project. With proven data supporting the positive impacts of the outdoors and daily exercise, she created a clean, safe hiking trail that anyone can hike to destress.
Gold Award Girl Scout Katherine focused her project on raising awareness of the importance of early childhood vision exams to improve the quality of life for children. Katherine experienced the loss of vision in one eye when she was a young child because she did not receive the necessary medical attention at an early age that would have saved her sight. Good eyesight and eye health are crucial to learning and to functionally well in all aspects of life. Her project involved reaching out to several news sources, pediatricians, preschools, social media, and social service agencies to inform parents that it is essential to bring their children to the eye doctor. The newspapers and social media alone reached over 30,000 households. Katherine also recruited several optometrists to host an all-day free eye clinic for children.
Gold Award Girl Scout Haley etched 50+ mirrors at her local elementary school to reflect positive words back at the students to help build up their self-esteem. This project was especially important during the global pandemic as students returning to school had faced variables that no one could have ever imagined.
Gold Award Girl Scout Eliza created an instructional and compelling video to teach others how to lobby local elected officials for change. The video, just under 30 minutes, includes interviews with troop members, elected officials, other local activists. Eliza’s troop had spent years lobbying for the plastic bag ban in New Jersey.
Gold Award Girl Scout Isabella created a Women in STEM Club at her high school as a way for students to combat the stereotype that women cannot work in STEM. To learn about STEM, the club members performed various experiments and interviewed women who currently work in STEM fields. Isabella documented the club's progress on its YouTube channel, STEMpowered, and Instagram to inspire other girls to explore STEM.