[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.
[00:00:11] Sheryl: Welcome to Hearts of Gold. Today we have Rebekkah with us. Hi Rebekkah.
[00:00:16] Rebekkah: Hi.
[00:00:17] Sheryl: Can you tell us about your Girl Scout Gold Award project?
[00:00:21] Rebekkah: Yes. So through The Eyes was an immersive experience I created and provided for all ages and backgrounds.
[00:00:28] My Gold award took place at the local community center, the Jacob Grant Community Center. I created a sensory board with its braille, alphabet simulation glasses featuring glaucoma, macular degeneration, amblyopia, and a few other ones. I also added a hands-on activity that included a six bump muffin tin and six balls so that the visitors could have a hands-on way of learning braille.
[00:00:51] So the way you would use it is you simulate the braille on the alphabet board and then you put the ball into the muffin tin to make the braille kind of a confusing activity when you don’t see it, but yes. And then to keep the project sustainable, I added a UV lamp. Alongside QR codes linking to my website and social media pages instead of flyers and business cards.
[00:01:14] And then the social platforms allowed my project to achieve global and national impact required. For example, you, you’re in Wisconsin and I’m in Georgia, so.
[00:01:24] Sheryl: You’re absolutely right. Social media is how I connected with you. So, and, and I was able to follow your project as you went through. So it was very interesting to see you from the beginning all the way through your project to the success at the end when you earned your gold award.
[00:01:39] Rebekkah: Yes.
[00:01:39] Sheryl: What prompted this project for you? Why is it important to you?
[00:01:43] Rebekkah: My gold award was inspired by a personal struggle. I’ve been vi visually impaired since I was born. I was diagnosed with amblyopia and strabismus at the age of 16 months old. Then when I was 11, I suffered a horrific eye infection which caused my vision to decrease significantly.
[00:01:58] It is predicted by the time I’m 25 that the macular degeneration will have taken, its like final toll and I won’t be able to drive and, you know, be completely visually impaired. Growing up I was bullied and I was also told that I would never be able to drive, which I am now driving. I mean, not for much longer, but I am driving.
[00:02:19] And it really took a toll on me. And I struggled a lot. So when I completed my bronze and silver award, I automatically knew I wanted to do something for the visually impaired. I researched a lot of different like. Visually impaired influencers and I came across this influencer, her name’s Molly Burke.
[00:02:40] And she actually has, I think it’s ran pigment pigmentosa. And I love her. She went blind when she was 14. And so I relate to her a lot because that’s when I lost a lot of my vision was when I was in my early teens. And then I read a lot of medical ophthalmology books. I researched accessibility laws.
[00:03:04] I gave a lot of speeches, like a lot of public speaking. I took a lot of public speaking classes. And then I led my troop in accessible friendly activities and, you know, gave a lot of like troop meanings about it. And then I overall just spread awareness through social media.
[00:03:19] Sheryl: I love when Girl Scouts are able to take a personal experience and include it as part of their Gold Award project.
[00:03:28] It really, I think it really encourages them and gives them more strength to work through the project. Sometimes it’s. Not the most positive experience that triggers that. I really think it creates much more impactful projects though. What kind of reactions have you received from your project?
[00:03:47] Rebekkah: This one is a good question.
[00:03:50] I have received a lot of reactions, whether that was good or shocked or confused like my family. A lot of my distant family, they didn’t know, like I suffered with visual impairment. I mean, my parents were like, Hey, she’s blind. You know, it’s not like a personality trait. So like when I told my family and my distant family like cousins and great aunts and great uncles, and they saw my posts on social media, they would text me and be like, wow, your project is so inspiring.
[00:04:18] Like, we didn’t know you were suffering from this. This is fantastic. And I was like, You know, wow, thanks. Like, I appreciate it. And they would donate money to like the, the project itself. So like getting the, the 10 for the muffins paying for the weebly website. All those things really helped because they would, you know, donate money.
[00:04:39] Even paying for the ads on Facebook, just so that my project would spread awareness. My girl Scout leaders too, they didn’t expect my project to actually. Go where it went. They expected it to just be like, they’re like, I mean, that’s a good project, but it’s not big enough. And then I made it big enough.
[00:04:56] Sheryl: So let’s talk about that feedback that you received from that project’s not big enough to making it big enough. What did you propose to begin with and what adjustments did you make?
[00:05:06] Rebekkah: Originally I wanted to make like something that would go on the wall. And I wanted it to be like, Almost like a, not a poster, but like something that you could touch and you know, those kids toys that like you can, it’s like the little blocks.
[00:05:22] It was like a four-way. Yeah. And you can touch all the different sensory things. I kind of wanted something like that. And my neighbors actually, she is an OC specialist and so I worked very closely with her, with creating that idea, and I proposed it to my eye doctor because I, I originally wanted it at my eye doctor office, and that kind of leads into my struggle.
[00:05:43] So, you know, COVID hit and I started my project in 2019. Of course, you know, and then 2020, everything just fell to shambles and I had to redo the whole entire thing. And that’s when I first submitted my, you know, award. Of course, you know, the whole covid thing took the toll and they’re like, we don’t think you should put it in a doctor’s office.
[00:06:03] I was like, probably not. So I instead wanted to put in the library. Well, I live in the city of Richmond Hill and the city of Richmond Hill decided, We’re not gonna, you know, the library, we’re actually renovating it. So they decided to renovate the library right when I asked to put my project there.
[00:06:23] And so that got turned down, obviously because of the renovations. And so that’s when the community center came in and I ended up, instead of making it a big thing on the wall, I turned it into a table. And it’s a, it’s not a big table, but it’s big enough. It’s probably maybe four feet wide. And three feet across.
[00:06:43] So it’s a decent sized table and it has like everything that you need. And the QR codes and everything.
[00:06:50] Sheryl: What kind of feedback have you gotten about your project?
[00:06:53] Rebekkah: So on opening day, we had, I think it was 85 people come.
[00:06:59] Sheryl: Wow.
[00:06:59] Rebekkah: And then I post, Yeah, I know, right? I posted it in the community page and the actual community center also posted it.
[00:07:06] And so all sorts of people came. And came to look at the project and everything, and I had a little tick counter and I would count every single person. And they loved it. The kids were loving it. The adults thought it was fantastic because they could put the glasses on and see. And a lot of them were like, my parents’ friends would come and they’re like, wow, you really see like this because the amblyopia, you can’t, I can’t see outta my left eye.
[00:07:29] So I painted the whole glass black and shaded it over and they were like, wow, really? This is what you see? And I was like, Yeah, this is what I see. And then some of the kids will put the glasses on and be like, oh, this is what my friend sees too. And like, it was so cute seeing everyone like grow into the project and love it.
[00:07:46] And then it. With all the little kids, I would ask them their name and then I would make their name braille and they loved it.
[00:07:52] Sheryl: Leadership is a component of the Gold Award project. How did you present your leadership and grow those skills during your project?
[00:07:59] Rebekkah: My project was very solo. My mom helped a lot with the driving and everything.
[00:08:05] Of course my neighbor gave the advice for the ot, but I would really lead the meetings. Like I had little outlines of everything I wanted to touch on. I had a whole scheduled calendar and I would write, like whenever my meetings were, so I’d have like a meeting every week. I was homeschooled throughout my whole project, so that worked out really well.
[00:08:26] Because I didn’t have like school hours, so I could actually meet during the day. And so I would tell my mom, I’d be like, okay, well we have this meeting on this and this day at this time, and then I would like write the whole outline and I would let her look over it. But usually she wouldn’t gimme like crazy feedback, like trying to change it to make it her own.
[00:08:43] She would just be like, oh, that’s fantastic. Okay. And so she’d go to the meeting. And then I would leave the whole meeting and if she had extra questions that were like helpful or whatever, she would like ask her question and then I would just write down the answer and the question. So I was like very much in charge of the whole thing, like for the shopping trip to get all the supplies.
[00:09:04] We did one big shopping trip to Walmart and I wrote the whole entire list of everything we needed. And she went with me and she helped me budget it and be like, well, This ball pack is cheaper than this one. And then like when I had to order the pins, because the balls and the table are connected with these like the metal balls at the bank, you know those pen holders?
[00:09:28] Yeah. It’s connected with that. So that kids can’t yank it and, you know, play with everything. So she helped me connect all that and find out how much that costed and like how far, like the link I would need. So we had to, it was really funny. I had to sit at the table and measure my face from the table to see how, like, how long I needed to pick up, you know, the glasses and stuff.
[00:09:49] So she was very helpful with letting me lead the project.
[00:09:53] Sheryl: What else did you learn about yourself during your Gold Award project?
[00:09:57] Rebekkah: I learned that I am bossy. I am a very bossy person. I knew I was bossy, but I didn’t realize how bossy I was. Until like people would give me advice and I was like, no, I want it my way.
[00:10:12] Haha. And so I’m very much a very, a bossy. Manager. And it worked out cuz I went into managing in high school as one of my jobs. So like, I think maybe my job played a role in my actual personal life, my gold award, because I was very much like using my managing skills from work in my gold award project.
[00:10:34] Like all sorts of ways. I also am a perfectionist. I don’t like when things get messed up and so like, The little, what is it? The vinyl paper, because I, I didn’t wanna paint the table. It was too much, it was too expensive to paint the table. Instead, I’d rather put the vinyl, what’s it called? It’s like, you know, the vinyl that you can cover tables with?
[00:11:02] I can’t remember the name of it.
[00:11:03] Sheryl: Shelf paper?
[00:11:03] Rebekkah: Yeah shelf paper. Yeah, shelf paper. I put shelf paper down the sides and it kept getting sprinkled and I was like, Losing my mind over it. So I redid that like four or five times just trying to make it look good because I was like, this is my golden award. I have to make it look perfect, especially for opening day.
[00:11:20] I kept like rearranging everything and I was like, no. I want it this way and then like it was just chaotic. My whole like grand opening. I wanted it to look all pretty and I had like this bow set out and I just, I was so excited and had to make it perfect so, oh, and my social media, I was obsessive over my social media for those, especially when the council was watching it because my whole time I was working on my project, they were really obsessively watching it cause they wanted to see, you know, if I was posting or not.
[00:11:50] And so I would constantly post, I had a schedule every week on like Mondays and Fridays. I would post content and I would always take pictures of, like, I would specifically go to the library to take a picture of the machine or I’d go to the library to take a picture of a large print book. I was very obsessive with that.
[00:12:07] Sheryl: What did you learn about social media from that?
[00:12:10] Rebekkah: How to manage social media for sure. Like I had my own social media before that, but I really learned how to like, Get people’s eye because I would post content and I would see my statistics because I had, I have a business account so I could, to see all the statistics I would get per post and all the likes and all the comments.
[00:12:30] And I really learned like the in-depth art of like the business. And it was really cool seeing like, oh, this post got 48 likes, so this post only got five. And I was like, oh man. But. My Facebook would really get more than my Instagram, which is kind of shocking cuz I really expected, you know, the girls like the younger audience to be more on the Instagram.
[00:12:53] But now my Facebook got more. So I was kind of surprised by that. And also girl Scouts, historic Georgia. Let me take over for Quest Fest because my gold award. So that was really cool.
[00:13:03] Sheryl: For those that don’t know, can you share what Quest Fest is?
[00:13:06] Rebekkah: So Quest Fest doesn’t exist anymore, but when it did, it was a festive like it was a festival almost of a, kind of like a treasure hunt, like a hide and seek treasure hunt kind of thing.
[00:13:21] And so they would have all these different stations of, of where you would go and you would take a picture with like a stranger. So I remember one of our quests. Do you know what dabbing is? Like where you would like dab? It’s, it’s a dance thing. It was really popular in 2017. That’s like the first Quest fest came out.
[00:13:38] We had to dab with 10 strangers and then make a collage and submit it. Or you have to find every single state’s license plate. In downtown Savannah. So all these girls, like probably a thousand girls, are just like wandering around downtown Savannah taking pictures of license plates and dabbing with strangers.
[00:13:57] Or you have to go to the pirate house, which is a restaurant and take a picture with a pirate or you have to find Juliette Gordon Lowe on like a bus. and she’s dressed up..
[00:14:07] Sheryl: And Quest Fest is, is not council specific. People come from all over the country. Yeah. In the world. Right to go to Quest Fest. So it was a big deal.
[00:14:16] And the fact that you were able to that historic Georgia allowed you to take over their social media for a day during, during that event was, was pretty cool.
[00:14:26] Rebekkah: Oh yeah. And Christina Lachago was huge for like Girl Scouts. I’m sure you know about Christina. She still does a lot of the things I think she’s doing.
[00:14:35] Venom this summer with Girl Scouts, that’s, they’re doing that Disney. Mm-hmm. I’m not going to that, but that looks fun. That’s definitely gonna be fun for those younger girls. But she let me take over her social media one time. I did a phone interview with her a few times. I’ve met her in person like four times maybe.
[00:14:53] Yeah. Every year that she did, because the first year was Maddie and Tay. And I met them in person twice as well. But that was before my Gold Award. That was. I was gonna even, that was my bronze awaard then. But yeah, Christina is great. She is fantastic. She really helped boost my Gold Award page when it was first starting.
[00:15:11] Like she would share my content. It was fantastic and that, that was a great connection. She would send me mail and like, Pins and like little swag things, and I would boost her content and then she would boost mine. She’s great.
[00:15:24] Sheryl: That’s a great example of partnership and how you, when you’re working on your gold award or any of the highest awards, really think about your connections and how, you know, how you can use your connections, support your connections in order to, for them to support you.
[00:15:41] That’s, that’s a great example and it’s part of the learning process.
[00:15:44] Rebekkah: Historic Georgia would also share my stuff. So like I specifically would go to the Juliet Gordon Low Museum, like me and my boyfriend went on like a date and so I took every single picture I could and I made so much content with it for my gold award page.
[00:16:02] And they shared it. They kept sharing my content because I would tag their location and the birthplace would share it. It was awesome. It was really great seeing them share it. And then I learned and I met. Sue, Sue Ellen. She’s the c e o. I met her and she would share my content. That was really awesome too.
[00:16:19] Sheryl: Yeah, and you can’t be afraid of asking.
[00:16:21] Rebekkah: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:22] Sheryl: One of, one of the things that I tell anybody is, you know, if you don’t ask a question, the answer is always no. If, if, even if you ask the questions, the answer is no. What have you lost?
[00:16:33] Rebekkah: I wish I would’ve got a picture with her at the Savannah Parade. That would’ve been awesome, but, She was busy.
[00:16:38] She was with the little girls. It was awesome though, seeing her in person again. So, and I, yeah, I was part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, so that was really cool. Being part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, you know, it’s one of the biggest in the world. So I was like so excited about that. And I had the gold award sash and oh, it was exciting.
[00:16:56] Sheryl: Looking back, if you were to change anything about your project, what would you change and why?
[00:17:01] Rebekkah: I think I would’ve probably pushed it a little bit more on social media. Although the council loved my social media thing, they really wanted YouTube. So any young girl making their, like going and starting their project, I suggest you start a YouTube channel and video document because my photo documentation was great.
[00:17:21] They loved it. They thought it was great. I showed all the statistics. They loved it so much, but I kind of set a standard for all the new girls. Like another girl in my troop is now starting her Gold Award and. They want her to start, you know, video documenting instead of photo. And so I feel like I would’ve started a video documentation as well.
[00:17:41] Instead of just Facebook and Instagram, I really would’ve started posting more of like, I guess YouTube videos filming my way through. Although I’m very camera shy still. Like I don’t know how I would’ve done with that. I mean, like I’m shaking right now doing a podcast, and I can only imagine if I was like filming videos all day every day.
[00:18:02] Because I am such a socially awkward person when I’m actually talking. So taking pictures and like rewriting a description a few times and rereading it to myself and being like, oh, this sounds good. And then like, you know, just clicking a little post button, that’s fine, but if I’m actually having the talk, I will get so frozen.
[00:18:21] But you have to really be out there. You have to be ready for that. That’s. I would definitely have made videos.
[00:18:26] Sheryl: I agree. Video is a very difficult medium and you know, you can, you can take pictures of other things and make them interesting. Video is, is much more complicated like that.
[00:18:38] Rebekkah: Yes. And it’s very like nervous.
[00:18:40] I’m very, I’m such a nervous person. I couldn’t only imagine, but I, that’s would be my one thing. I would’ve redone, I would’ve made videos of like for my very first time. Like my first ever, you know, creating my idea, I would’ve like, sent my idea on camera and then like, you know, continued on. Like I, maybe I would’ve recorded my interview with the Gold Award Council, all those things.
[00:19:06] But I don’t know, I think I wish I would’ve done that for sure.
[00:19:10] Sheryl: You mentioned that you also did your silver and your bronze. Can you share a little bit about those projects?
[00:19:15] Rebekkah: So, my bronze award was dedicated to electricity saving. We made light switch covers. We, we made so many that we still have thousands of them and we hand them out as swaps because we can’t get rid of them.
[00:19:30] I probably still have at least 200 light switch covers sitting in my garage right now. And then we have five other girls who also have 200 in the garage. So that was our big thing was the light switch covers and they were so cute. They were decorated and they said like, turn me off. And we had like, All these little cartoons drawn on them.
[00:19:49] But we made a presentation and then we went on our little school news and we presented why it’s good to save electricity. And you know, that’s like the easiest project because that’s the most guided project. And then our silver award, if it was one person, it would’ve been a golden word. We redid the whole entire bath center at the Liberty Humane Shelter.
[00:20:09] So we replaced the bathtub. We did, we repainted the whole thing. We redid the roofing. We actually redid the whole structure for it, and then we also filled it with soap, redid the plumbing. It was so much work, but so worth it because they really needed it. And it was fantastic to help those dogs. We also donated a bunch of food.
[00:20:34] That was our first, like ever drive was the donation of food. To them. And then we also like volunteered at a few of their little events. And I actually got one of my cats there so.
[00:20:46] Sheryl: Lots of Girl Scouts do work with Humane societies and I’ve never heard of replacing the bath area, and that is a amazing project that I agree.
[00:20:56] If it had been a single girl Scout, it would’ve been gold worthy, likely. What did you learn about with construction or whatever while you, your troop did that silver award?
[00:21:06] Rebekkah: Of course, we were all little, you know, 11 and 12 and 13 year old girls. So we were all like trying to play around instead of actually doing the project.
[00:21:14] So my dad was there and my grandfather, and they actually did a lot of the. Plumbing we just watched because, you know, they probably didn’t want us working with hand tools, but we did get to watch and it was really cool watching them like re plumb and then we had to go buy the pipes and stuff. So, you know, my girl Scout leader, which was my mom at the time, she was like making us make a list and then we had to go pick out the exact plumbing supplies.
[00:21:39] Same thing with like, we rented like specific tools that my dad didn’t have. And so like trying to figure out which tool to rent was like crazy, but it was very exciting and we got to do all the budgeting. So trying to budget the hand tools plus all of the different little pipes and necessities, the bathtub and all of that into it was, Fantastic.
[00:22:01] But we worked very hard for cookie season that year, but it still works today. So that’s like, that means we did something right. Right. Absolutely. It doesn’t leak. So my dad did some of that, you know, that hard work. Right. And then my grandfather did the bathtub. Right. So we’re good.
[00:22:17] Sheryl: What other girl Scout experiences do you have to share?
[00:22:19] Rebekkah: So I’ve been a Girl Scout for 12 years, since I was a daisy. And I have done a lot. I’ve been on a lot of trips. I’ve been to Camp Low, I’ve been to Camp Martha Johnson’s, but I’ve been all over with my Girl Scout troop. And I would say my favorite experience was probably the camp Big trip we went on for my silver Award.
[00:22:42] We went up to North Carolina and we stayed in a cabin. I mean, it wasn’t like a little tiny cabin, it was. An Airbnb worthy cabin. It was nice. And that was so fun because I actually got to travel with all my girls. And I actually have like, my two best friends are Girl Scouts with me. So shout out Katrina and Maya if they’re listening.
[00:23:01] They are definitely the highlight of my, my days, my Sundays when I get to go see them and hang out and go, go to my meetings and, you know, just fool around. What is in your future? I graduated high school already, so I graduated in December. I was supposed to take a gap year, but my health has decided not to.
[00:23:21] So I’m starting college in the fall at Georgia Southern. And I’m getting a degree in psychology, like a bachelor’s in psychology. I haven’t decided what I’m exactly gonna do with it, but I have like kind of two options, like two different paths I wanna go. Either ABA therapy, Or trauma therapy.
[00:23:38] Sheryl: Is there anything else that you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:23:41] Rebekkah: The biggest piece of advice is just use every resource. I would just suggest for any gold award girl that’s trying to get their gold award is just to use every resource available. Use all of them.
[00:23:54] Sheryl: How do you make your s’mores?
[00:23:55] Rebekkah: Okay, this is controversial.
[00:23:57] I use a microwave mostly because campfire smoke hurts my. My sinuses, so I use a microwave. I’m a controversial girl. I also don’t eat gelatin, so I have to use kosher kosher marshmallows. So I’m expensive and I’m weird.
[00:24:15] Sheryl: Well, thanks for joining us today.
[00:24:17] Rebekkah: Thank you. I appreciate it.
[00:24:18] Sheryl: Make sure to click or subscribe so you always know when new episodes are released.
[00:24:24] Power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:24:28] Walter: Thank you for listening. If you’d like to be on the show to share your story of how you earned your gold award, reach out and send an email to growandshare@outlook.com. Be sure to catch up on our previous shows on any of your favorite podcasting platforms, as well as view the full video versions at youtube.com/SherylMrobinson.
[00:24:50] Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.