[00:00:00] Walter: The Hearts of Gold Podcast is brought to you by the Grow and Share Network, produced by off the Walter Media Productions.
[00:00:14] Sheryl: Welcome to Hearts of Gold. Today we have Orezi with us. Hi Orezi
[00:00:20] Orezi: Hi.
[00:00:20] Sheryl: Can you tell us about your Girl Scout Gold Award project?
[00:00:23] Orezi: My Girl Scout Gold award is called a different narrative. I made a website that is a college review site but it’s different in that it’s for black students and it’s made by black college students so that people can get a better perspective of what the racial climate is like at different colleges.
[00:00:43] Sheryl: What inspired your project?
[00:00:45] Orezi: I started my project junior year and I was really in the thick of looking at colleges and trying to figure out where I wanted to go, and I was doing such a detailed surge. I probably had over a hundred. Pros and cons lists for different colleges, and I would read niche reviews a lot, and I would get to the one star reviews and sometimes I’d see one comment that was like, this school is really racist.
[00:01:09] What doesn’t say what race that person is, what happened, why they think that? It’s really just like that one comment. And when I tried to find information online about a similar website that would have. Like from black students, there wasn’t anything. So I decided that I would kind of fill that space in the community and make a website for black students.
[00:01:29] Just because from my own personal experience.
[00:01:32] Sheryl: What kind of feedback have you gotten from people that have used your website?
[00:01:35] Orezi: I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they are surprised that this didn’t exist already, because it’s like such a useful website and it’s so needed. I tell people about it all the time and I’ve had pretty much only positive commentary back about like how useful it’s been and just being able to read the responses and having this tailored to black.
[00:01:56] Sheryl: In looking at your website, you have a ton of reviews from universities and colleges right now. How can others help you to get even more?
[00:02:06] Orezi: I would love submissions from any college even. Historically, black colleges and universities, they can go to the submission tab and write about their experience.
[00:02:16] They can talk about specific things that have happened to them or answer like specific questions such as like what is some advice you would give to a black student here? And I, my main thing is that I would love for them to be honest, if there’s honesty and just sharing your own personal experience, like things about.
[00:02:32] What the dining hall hours are. You can get that online, but just people sharing their own narratives is what I want to be on the website. So I’m really looking for more of those.
[00:02:42] Sheryl: When I looked at some of the comments, reviews on the website for some of the universities, one thing that I took away is that if you are at a university and you’re not finding your group of people, that within some of those comments is some information.
[00:03:01] How to best find different organizations that might appeal to you and I thought that that was a very helpful piece of information. Thoughts on how that kind of information is helpful?
[00:03:13] Orezi: A lot of people shared resources that are available to them, and it’s even important to know if there aren’t any resources or if the average person doesn’t know.
[00:03:22] The resources available. A lot of people plugged their black student unions or black student associations, but then there’s like my college for example, I know that the review on there talks about how a lot of black students hang out at our quantitative skill center. And that’s something that you might not know because it’s not like advertised that way.
[00:03:40] It’s just that that’s what happens to be. And so it’s really interesting when there’s people who just choose to share like what resources it really. For like future black students, people who are looking at colleges and deciding where they want to go to have like the idea of what it’s like and if they’re already there, what they can do in the future.
[00:03:59] Sheryl: Mentioning that about the comment in your college. I, my college was on there and I was very surprised. So I’ve graduated from, for Turbo University and Lacrosse Wisconsin. Yeah. And that was listed on there. I was very surprised. And when I, what was interesting to me when I read. Feedback for Viterbo is in lacrosse, which is not very big.
[00:04:19] It’s 50,000 people. We actually have three college universities and in the comment they referenced VI Turbo’s background clearly because that’s the school the student attended. However UW lacrosse is also there. Which has a stronger social group aspect and they actually invite the Fit Turbo students to join them at UW lacrosse.
[00:04:42] And I thought that was an interesting cross university comment that I saw. And obviously I wouldn’t have seen, I didn’t read all
[00:04:49] of them, but cuz it was my school, I read that one. So I thought that was interesting. It was. To me, if I had been a student, that would’ve been a very helpful piece because I wouldn’t have thought to go to the other university to look for that kind of social group.
[00:05:02] Orezi: Yeah. It’s really just like for people to help out others.
[00:05:06] Sheryl: How has your project changed you?
[00:05:09] Orezi: I think it’s definitely spoken to my resilience. Like I’ve always known that I’m a very like, persistent person, but I hit like a lot of roadblocks along the way and it took me about a year to do the project and a lot of the times I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to finish it, but I was just so like, Strongly like insistent that I was going to finish, that I kept on going throughout those roadblocks.
[00:05:32] So it’s just made me feel more confident in myself and just my ability to take on my goals.
[00:05:39] Sheryl: What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
[00:05:42] Orezi: By far, getting responses. That was the main, like chunk of the project. I originally thought that it’d be really easy. I was sending out emails to people and saying, if you’re interested in it, email me back.
[00:05:54] And then I’ll like if you have students who are interested, I can email them and then we can discuss what like the parameters are for what I want them to write, and I can explain my project to them. And it was just like too much. Back and forth for people that it was just becoming a really convoluted process.
[00:06:10] So I had to change to using a Google form with some questions on there so that people had an idea of what to write. Cuz a lot of people didn’t know, like just off the top of like, share your experience, that wasn’t specific enough. So I sent that and then like another issue. The sort of response process was that when I had the most time to be emailing people and sending them things was when I was on break.
[00:06:32] But when people were on break they didn’t want to like be doing like writing things and doing work. So it was more helpful for me to send things out when I was in school and other people were in school, but I was struggling to find time to do that. So just those two factors. Really large roadblocks and getting it completed.
[00:06:51] Sheryl: How did this project build your leadership skills?
[00:06:54] Orezi: I had to communicate with so many different groups and just explain like why I had to like, why I thought my project was important. And I think that’s like a really good leader. Leadership skill is to sort of get people on board with you. And also I had to apply for grants.
[00:07:10] So even like a larger organization trying to get them to also see my vision on that. So I think that as far as leadership skills go for communication that was. One of the main ones that I developed.
[00:07:22] Sheryl: Do you have a favorite memory or maybe a favorite piece of feedback from your project?
[00:07:27] Orezi: I was reaching out through so many different mediums.
[00:07:30] I was getting a few ticks of the black menaces who are the blackton union at byu. And they would go around and like ask students at BYU different questions about like, Diversity on campus and I DMed one of the members just like casually asking if they were willing to write a response or send it to other people.
[00:07:51] And I was surprised that they like responded back. And so I have a response from the black medicines and that was really surprising to me and I’m really proud of that, that I feel like they’re like a micro celebrity that’s on the site.
[00:08:03] Sheryl: That’s super fun. What other girl Scout experiences have you had that you’d like to share?
[00:08:08] Orezi: I have done a lot of traveling with Girl Scouts this summer since it was my last summer as like an official girl scout. It was really great to do a lot of, so I did a destination and then a trip with my troop from like all of our saved cookie money. So I went to Costa Rica with my troop and that was such a great experience.
[00:08:27] I did like, All these adventure things I’ve never done before, like canoeing and kayaking and white water rafting. And I also got to go zip lining. It was just an amazing experience and like closing out my troop that way. And then I went to Greece as a destination and I feel like a lot of people don’t know about the Girl Scout destinations, but they’re a lot of fun.
[00:08:49] And like you can use cookie money to fund your way to these different trip.
[00:08:53] Sheryl: What was your favorite part about going on the destination with Girl Scouts you didn’t know?
[00:08:58] Orezi: Meeting the Girl Scouts that I didn’t know was probably like one of the best parts. Like you spend a lot of time with your troop when you’re doing Girl Scout activities, so meeting other Girl Scouts is always a really great opportunity.
[00:09:09] And they were so much fun. Like, we did karaoke every night, which like every night I was like, oh man, I’m getting like, kind of tired of it. But it was nice to like spend time with those people that I hadn’t met.
[00:09:19] What a special
[00:09:19] Sheryl: way to close out your troop experience with the trip to Costa Rica. How many girls in your troop went to Costa Rica and how long did you plan for that?
[00:09:30] Orezi: I think it was about like eight girls from my troop who went to Costa Rica, and we’ve kind of been planning for it for about three or four years now because Covid delayed it for two years, so it was a much anticipated trip.
[00:09:45] Sheryl: What is coming up in your future?
[00:09:47] Orezi: I am in my first year of college, so just a lot of studying is in my future, but I’m really excited.
[00:09:55] I hope to get some research opportunities cuz I wanna be a research psychologist when I grow up. So doing some research would be a great thing to do and pretty much just. Working through college.
[00:10:07] Sheryl: What generated the interest in research psychology?
[00:10:10] Orezi: I have just always been really fascinated with, with psychology and reading those different studies.
[00:10:16] I think it’d be awesome if I could be the one who is creating those studies and. Revealing new things about mental health and I haven’t really decided what I would want to study specifically. But I think I have quite a lot of time to figure it out.
[00:10:29] Sheryl: Is there anything else that you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:10:32] Orezi: Yeah, I would like to say that if anyone is a Girl Scout who’s considering doing their gold award it’s like such a large project, but I think it’s really worth it. And there’s so many built in things in Girl Scouts to really help you. Like there’s mentors and you can just, if you have enough time to do it, I would absolutely push through and like continue.
[00:10:53] And if you’re having trouble coming up with an idea, you can easily reach out to your council or GS u s a. To kind of generate some ideas. Even the website itself has different like ways for you to brainstorm to think about what you’d like to do cuz it creates such meaningful change in your community.
[00:11:09] And not everyone takes that opportunity to end with a gold award. I think it’s really important that people do it.
[00:11:15] Sheryl: How do you make your s’mores?
[00:11:17] Orezi: I don’t like chocolate, so I make my s’mores pretty normally, but without the chocolate. And I’m not really picky about like golden brown mar marshmallows or like charred marshmallows.
[00:11:27] Like either is fine as long as it’s like melty in the middle.
[00:11:31] Sheryl: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:11:33] Orezi: Thank you.
[00:11:34] Sheryl: Make sure to click follow or subscribe so you always know when new episodes are. And power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:11:46] Walter: The Hearts of Gold Podcast is brought to you by the Grow and Share Network produced by Off the Walter Media Productions.
[00:11:52] Thank you for listening and spreading the word on what we do. If you want to share your story of how you earned your goal award, reach out and send an email to grow and. At outlook.com be sure to listen to the newest episodes on your favorite podcast app, as well as view the full video episodes on youtube.com/SherylMrobinson.
[00:12:13] That’s youtube.com/Sheryl, the letter m, Robinson. Take care and we’ll see you next time.