[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 Valencia with us. Hi, Valencia.
[00:00:17] Valencia: Hi, how are you?
[00:00:18] Sheryl: I’m great. Can you tell us about your girl scout gold award project?
[00:00:23] Valencia: My Girl Scout Gold Award project was completed last year in 2022 of May.
[00:00:31] The title of my Girl Scout Gold Award project was Giselle Learns About Alzheimer’s. My entire project Its purpose was to aid children who may have grandparents that have Alzheimer’s or that were just interested in learning about Alzheimer’s, and I created this children’s book to use as a tool to hold sessions with various different groups.
[00:00:56] And we use the book to show a small story arc with a character, Giselle, um, who. is seven years old in the book, and she learned, she learns that her grandmother has Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s, and she takes this, you know, sudden shift in her family’s dynamic, and she takes it upon herself to learn not only what Alzheimer’s is, But how to interact with a family member that has Alzheimer’s.
[00:01:27] So in my sessions, we were able to have conversations about Alzheimer’s. And these sessions ended up extending from just my target audience, which was second and third grade to Alzheimer’s patients through the New Jersey Alzheimer’s Association. And I was able to read to them in a session. I was able to even.
[00:01:48] Reach out across the country and have sessions with children from all the way in Arizona. Because of COVID these sessions were through Zoom. I began my project in 2019, which was my freshman year of high school. And I had just been like in the works of like trying to figure out where I wanted to point my project to.
[00:02:11] I wasn’t even sure who, what, where, when. I had no clue. I just knew that I needed my Girl Scout Gold Award done by the end of my high school career because I was like, oh, this is a goal that I have to accomplish. I just wasn’t sure like what to do. And then. My mom started pointing me in the direction of looking, like, towards myself and looking towards something that has, like, impacted me.
[00:02:37] And then when I look at, like, all the things in my life, I think of, like, you know, like, the extracurriculars I did, like, theater and, like, the sports I did and things like that. But when you look, like, more interpersonally with, like, the people that you’ve made connections with, Alzheimer’s had definitely had the biggest impact on me.
[00:02:55] Being that my grandfather suffered of Alzheimer’s up until his passing. He meant a lot to me as just, like, relationship wise. A lot of my encouragement came from him. A lot of my motivation comes from him when it comes to coming to school, being that he migrated here and migrated my entire family here.
[00:03:15] So just, like, being a first generation student and, like, wanting to make, like, my grandfather, my family proud was just super important to me. So being that in second grade after all this time of him like driving me around and taking me to and from school, to and from like extracurriculars and just being actively a part of those parts of my life.
[00:03:40] tEaching me to play the piano to suddenly no longer being able to drive, no longer being able to remember my name was a huge shift for me. And even after that, I was still able to hold a strong relationship with my grandfather. But that took, like, work on my end, and that’s definitely something that I was able to show within the book Giselle learns about Alzheimer’s.
[00:04:07] So this tool, like, shows the back and forth that a child may go through as well with being just very confused about what the disease means, and what the disease means for their relationship with their grandparent, or anyone else that they’re familiarly related to. I just decided like this, this was like an important subject to me.
[00:04:28] Alzheimer’s specifically with like the elderly and children. I just think that relationship automatically just struck me. Like once I started like looking into like the things that made the most amount of impact on my life and I started going through the Girl Scout Gold Award process and they had the small boxes up for which yeah.
[00:04:49] Which passion you wanted to lean towards, elderly and children, like, clicked for me. Even though, like, I feel like in most situations, those Two ideas and thoughts are never put together being that it’s such a large age gap, but truly the elderly and children have probably the most amount of impact on each other being, like, wisdom shared in a childlike experience is exchanged.
[00:05:16] Shortly after, like, being able to come up with this idea of the book after, like, my first meeting with my advisor, I was told that I couldn’t just publish a book. I needed to have interpersonal connection with people in my community, locally, locally. I So I had reached out to neighborhood community centers, like the Morristown Neighborhood House in New Jersey.
[00:05:47] And I was able to meet with two different classrooms at the neighborhood house through Zoom. So I was put on like a projector in their classroom, and then I was able to see all their 40 kids. And. That was my first session with a group of kids and reading to them, they were completely engaged, which for me felt really good because like this story that I was able to make kept them, like, engaged with the entire story and then engaged with, like, what Alzheimer’s was.
[00:06:19] We were able to have an actual discussion. It was a successful session. I was asked, oh, you know, like, I think my sister may have Alzheimer’s because my mom’s always telling me that she forgets everything and it’s just like, and you have to like explain like, oh like, you know, this is something that usually targets the elderly.
[00:06:37] I was able to meet other children that had grandparents that suffered with Alzheimer’s. I was able to meet Alzheimer patients that were able to give their book to their grand Children. Parents that were that were caregivers that were able to give their book to the grandchildren. so That always felt like great.
[00:06:56] I had even had people in their mid forties come up to me and say that their book helped them in some way, shape or form. Like, even if they didn’t use it for their kids directly, just having that tool and that source meant a lot to them, which meant a lot to me.
[00:07:13] Sheryl: Your book, it contains a very relatable story and the pictures include a very diverse group of people.
[00:07:24] Can you share how you created that? What some of your thought processes were and some of your goals in creating that book?
[00:07:34] Valencia: Illustration wise, Giselle herself takes a likeness of a real person named Giselle who I had babysat the summer of 2020. Right after the pandemic, I think I was lacking a little bit of motivation to get my Golden Word done.
[00:07:51] Just being that, like, going to school became a hassle online, and then I, like, just not having the interpersonal connection of meeting with anybody. A lot of my advisors I had never even met in person at this point. But when I had started babysitting Giselle, I had seen a few moments of her interacting with her grandmother, and how important that experience was for her.
[00:08:17] And Giselle, the real girl, is biracial. So and Alzheimer’s is a disease that doesn’t have any racial boundaries. So I thought it was important to showcase a young girl of different races and different ethnicities, as well as a family that showed up. Vast variety and diversity in that disease can impact anyone regardless of what you look like or culturally where you come from.
[00:08:48] So I think that, like, having a book where a child can look at it and maybe either see themselves or just see someone else in it is just super important, being able to see, like, bits and pieces of yourself, so.
[00:09:01] Sheryl: You keep referring to this project as your book. However, it is much, much more than a book. You have done visuals that are available on YouTube of people reading your book in multiple languages.
[00:09:18] What encouraged you to add those other elements in order to reach even more people?
[00:09:25] Valencia: Similar to Alzheimer’s not having a racial boundary, it doesn’t have a language barrier either. So I had first started with just the e book as a way for people to gain easy access to the book but over time I realized that even my own grandfather didn’t speak to me.
[00:09:46] just English. He spoke French and Haitian Creole. So and there would be moments where I couldn’t communicate with him because of like lacking the ability to retain language information at certain points. So I thought having the ability to read this book in other languages so that the tool could be used in so many other places was super important for me, especially once I was able to have outreach in the West Coast with Girl Scouts in the West Coast.
[00:10:19] I realized that like, oh, like this is actually, you know, becoming a lot more widespread. And I don’t want this to just be a national project, but something that can impact people internationally or those. who are in the nation that just don’t happen to speak Alzheimer’s. I was able to do a meeting in Newark, New Jersey in which is in the Northern part of New Jersey.
[00:10:44] I was able to do two meetings, one day reaching out to the African American community in the morning, and then. In the afternoon, I was able to reach out to the Haitian community in a meeting that was bilingual, where somebody else was translating for me. The book was shown on the YouTube channel with the translated version in Haitian Creole, and that crowd was able to You know, understand what I had written.
[00:11:14] And that like was a moment where I had seen direct impact and like it directly being able to help people. So a lot of times you see like, Oh, 20 different languages. And you never think of like, who’s actually going to be able to, you know, reach out to like who, who actually reaches out to, but I was able to see a moment where this tool was.
[00:11:36] being actively used. So that, that was important. And especially for communities where there’s mental health disparities and different beliefs on how mental health can make an impact on someone or just. Beliefs on what mental health is, having that language barrier glossed over and like that bridge built for different communities, I think just meant so much, like not only to me, but like to the people that we wanted to learn.
[00:12:10] Sheryl: You had a broad team. Can you tell us about your team and how they supported you?
[00:12:15] Valencia: My head advisor for this project, who was absolutely amazing. Her name was Robin Cohn and she works with the New Jersey Alzheimer’s Association. She was able to guide me in fighting a… Meeting and meeting in a session with Alzheimer’s patients who were able to get the ebook and were able to get physical copies that I gave them of the book.
[00:12:45] She was able to guide me in the right direction when it came to giving out pamphlets for the children at my sessions. I was able to get goodie bags from the New Jersey Alzheimer’s Association so that you left with something other than the tool from the sessions and like this knowledge like you just left with a physical reminder and something that you could bring home to show your parents too.
[00:13:09] So she was my biggest help and my biggest supporter and like all aspects of just guiding me in the right direction again and again with reading my book and making sure that It not only translates correctly met like in medical terms, but also that like it’s broken down enough where it makes sense.
[00:13:31] So she was one of the main parts of my team when it came to Alzheimer’s as like a whole broad spectrum. One of my. Other team members was a teacher from New Jersey. Her name is Simone Beatty, and she was able to help me edit, in the sense of making sure it made sense, would make sense to a second and third grader.
[00:13:56] I think. A lot of people can understand it being hard to define a word to a second and third grader, a very advanced word to a second and third grader, with it making sense and not over explaining something. So being able to explain what a disease is, who it affects, and how can you help, can be very hard to put in 15 pages within a story.
[00:14:22] And it’s still being correct, which I ended up learning throughout these sessions that not only were they able to learn from the book, but they were able to learn a lot more being able to have like small conversations about what neuroscience is. So that was just like impressive. And this tool that I was able to create just stood as, you know, a base.
[00:14:44] for all the information that they could learn. So Simone Beatty was just like the, Simone Beatty Edwards, sorry. She was just the biggest support in creating the story arc that would make sense for second and third graders. and then of course my mom was, My biggest help for some time. I couldn’t even drive around.
[00:15:08] So when it came to like publication and stuff like that, she was just there making sure that you know, the meetings and sessions made sense. She almost acted like as my own personal secretary at times. And I couldn’t take calls because some of those calls were only during the school day and during a game that I had.
[00:15:28] Because you know, most work days are nine to five and most games for me didn’t end until six o’clock. So she was always willing to like help out the best I can while like still letting me lead this project on my own, which I think was, is the main and most important part of the Girl Scout Gold Award project, having this help and these people around you, but being able to say like, this is what I want.
[00:15:51] This is how I want to execute it and how I want to succeed. seed in this and I just like need your help making sure that I’m successful in it. So those three women were able to make sure that I was successful in achieving this project and expanding as far as I could.
[00:16:07] Sheryl: Excluding COVID, what was your biggest challenge during your project and how did you overcome it?
[00:16:14] Valencia: The biggest challenge during my project had to have been my grandfather’s passing. He passed Before prior to me starting my sessions with the, with the tool, with the book I had just published the ebook and I had just received the printed versions right before his passing. anD. His passing made it hard for me to focus in school, let alone being able to complete my sessions wholeheartedly with cheer and joy, especially when you’re meeting with children, just being able to sit there and read a story that rang true to my life and took a lot of points from my experiences, just It was hard to complete emotionally.
[00:17:06] I was able, but I was able to get myself through it and see that there was a bigger picture. That like that moment would just guide me to like something bigger and be able to help more people, which I think again, with my grandfather being my biggest motivation, he would have wanted for me to do being that first generation grandchild.
[00:17:32] Being able to take our story and maybe thousands or however many people being able to tunnel this information and tunnel our experience into either helping them or making them understand, provide more information was super important. So that’s just kind of something that I had to kind of remember throughout these sessions.
[00:17:59] But emotionally, it was just. It’s really devastating and hard to get through, so.
[00:18:05] Sheryl: Oh, my heart goes out to you.
[00:18:07] Valencia: Thank you.
[00:18:08] Sheryl: What about a favorite memory from your project?
[00:18:12] Valencia: Right after I got the first copies of my book, when the first 100 copies of my book came to me, I was so excited to open it and I opened it um, with my grandparents, both my grandmother and my grandfather, being that my grandmother was.
[00:18:30] His caretaker and. Being able to see just like the physical book and like our experience and being in the house that like where all these experiences come from was just a surreal moment for me. I think that was just like the happiest I could have been being able to see like, this is real like this is where it just starts like this is just the beginning of.
[00:18:57] All the things that I can aspire to be and it just gave me hope not only for this project but for all other things I can accomplish past the Girl Scout Gold Award. So that like that moment will just always just ring in the back of my head of like, oh, I can do it. Like this is just physical evidence that I can do anything that I put my mind to.
[00:19:20] Sheryl: What is something that you didn’t know about the Gold Award process that might be helpful for future Gold Award Girl Scouts?
[00:19:27] Valencia: You truly did need an advisor and a team members and team members that would be able to help you in every aspect of your project, regardless of how small you might think that your project is, or how many.
[00:19:46] Pieces that you think you might not need as you continue to build your project. You realize that you need a lot more assistance and it’s okay to ask for help. I wish somebody had told me that too. That’s okay to like, want to reach out for help or once by or needing it, having an advisor from the New Jersey Alzheimer’s association would have been great for any project I decided to do with Alzheimer’s but having a was in second and third grade, teaching second and third grade, excelled me in my sessions and in the book and then having my mom like being able to lean on her for moments when I wasn’t able to fit certain calls or wasn’t able to fit certain things within my school and extracurricular schedule.
[00:20:37] Helped. And there were so many other people that helped me as well, being that those who translated the book for me were students and they were friends of mine that volunteered their time, and I was able to ask them for help and say, hey, like, I really, I know you know this language, like, please help me, like, I want to expand on this, and this means a lot to me, so please help.
[00:20:58] Being able to distribute books as well asking, like, hey, can you please help me, like, sort out these. Bags. I just need you to help me sort these bags. Or I have this email list and I have a game today. Do you mind helping me send these out before my game’s finished? I just want to send them out like at an appropriate time.
[00:21:19] I would text friends like, hey, can you just do this like quick favor for me? And it’s like my email password. Anything I can, but. Asking for help and getting help where you can is so important in completing any project and is important to being a leader in general is being able to know when you need to fall back on those around you and say this is just what I need from you, this is what I asked for you and making sure that you say please and thank you because it really does mean a lot and it takes a village to create something that would help and inform others.
[00:21:54] Sheryl: What other Girl Scout experiences would you like to share?
[00:21:57] Valencia: The camp that I would go to at Jockey Hollow in New Jersey just a lot of leadership skills all around, learning domestic skills, being that you were there for an entire weekend, and our troop leaders would have us make breakfast and lunch and And our own dinner for ourselves especially breakfast, just being able to, like, tell each other, like, hey, like, you’re on pancakes, you could do eggs cleaning up together, leaving things better than you found it was just important being able to, like, You know separate ourselves into different areas of the cabin like, Oh, look, you’re over here and what have you doing years of the camp and then getting to the point where you would lead certain activities for the younger Girl Scouts.
[00:22:45] I believe uh, we would lead for the brownies at some point for certain activities. As a cadet, you would lead for the brownies, which just was super important because now you’re seeing like leadership skills in action. It wasn’t just between each other and bickering over who burnt the pancakes, but actually being able to say, Oh, like, Hey I understand that you’re, you know, younger than me and this is like something that I can give you an information that I’ve gained from other Girl Scouts that I can now pass down to you and guide you in a certain fashion.
[00:23:22] And so I think that was just like super important to me, the camps, just me and overall experience and learning moment. And it was just like an important learning curve, I think for almost every Girl Scout to experience. What are your plans for the future? Right now, I’m hoping that Giselle Learns About becomes more of a series for me.
[00:23:44] I think that there are so many topics, aside from the medical field, but just social learning and history that Giselle as a character could learn from, that we could all learn from, that we all begin to question. esPecially now with a lot of schools learning about critical race theory in books or just expanding diversity in their books and in their curriculums having Giselle learns about, which is already the diverse series, being able to touch on so many different topics would just be super important to me especially being that now I’m in college, uh, taking like this small platform that I have and being able to shine light in a new city on a different topic would just.
[00:24:35] It just makes so much sense to me, and that’s kind of been the plan for the last year, and I’m trying to work as best and as quick as I can so I can pump out as many things as I can while still having the amount of quality and passion as I did in the first Giselle Learns About Alzheimer’s, so.
[00:24:54] Sheryl: Well, good luck. I look forward to reading more Giselle books. I really did enjoy this one. What else would you like to share with the audience?
[00:25:02] Valencia: I would just like to let any Girl Scout know that is interested in doing her Girl Scout Gold Award, and at some point might feel a bit unmotivated throughout completing the Girl Scout Gold Award, that the feeling of accomplishment, triumphs.
[00:25:20] Any feeling of stress and just like being overwhelmed once you’ve completed the gold award and that ceremony happens where you receive your certificate and you shake hands and take that picture that feeling. Just washes over anything else that you could feel and seeing the impact that you have on so many different people that aren’t just in Girl Scouts, but around the world around the nation in your own community people coming up to you and saying, Hey, this was like a really impactful thing that you did.
[00:25:58] Your friend’s parents saying like that’s this was insanely impressive means a lot. And it’s a great feeling and I think that everyone should be able to experience it. So if you’re a Girl Scout and you know that you had the opportunity, take it run with it and fly as far as you can.
[00:26:16] Sheryl: How do you make your s’mores?
[00:26:18] Valencia: I love to make my s’mores with a burnt marshmallow. Typically by a campfire, my I, there’s always a fire pit anywhere I can find it. I usually stick my marshmallow in the fire for. far too long and let it flame and burn up on the stick because I’m a bit impatient, and then I blow it out. I always put my marshmallow first on the graham cracker, then my chocolate and then graham cracker, and pull it away from the stick like that, give it 30 seconds to cool, and it’s like nice and melty.
[00:26:56] Sheryl: Well, thanks for joining us today.
[00:26:58] Valencia: Of course. Thank you for having me.
[00:27:00] Sheryl: Make sure to click follow or subscribe so you always know when new episodes are released. Power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:27:10] 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.
[00:27:21] 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. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next time.