[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 Elsie with us. Hi Elsie.
[00:00:15] Elsie: Hi.
[00:00:16] Sheryl: Can you tell us about your girl scout gold award project?
[00:00:19] Elsie: Absolutely. So I did my gold award project with the goal of helping wildlife.
[00:00:24] I built what I like to call a wildlife habitat at the council ground state park up in Merrill, Wisconsin. So, I built a butterfly garden, 2 bird houses, and a bat house, and then I did a really big education push, worked with the friends of the Council Ground State Park as much as I could, and I hosted 2 educational sessions right next to All of my wildlife habitat aspects, inviting the public in and then I manage a Facebook page and website as well to try and continue that education piece and help show people how they can help wildlife in their own backyard.
[00:01:02] Sheryl: What prompted this project for you?
[00:01:04] Elsie: I have a really big passion for animals and animal welfare in general. So right now, I actually just finished up my first semester at the University of Wisconsin Madison studying animal and veterinary biosciences with the hopes of going on to vet school after that.
[00:01:19] And I’ve known for many years that that was my goal, ultimately. So I knew going into my Gold Award that I wanted it to be something animal based and wildlife is where it landed.
[00:01:29] Sheryl: How did you connect with the state park for your project?
[00:01:33] Elsie: I did lots of research going into my project. I probably spent about a month just doing research on where I could help animals in my community.
[00:01:43] And I think the wildlife part was something that I had thought about. I think it was one of my first ideas, if I’m honest, of creating the wildlife habitat. But I thought it would just be too much physical work to build. So I did quite a bit of research into the companion animal side and into our stray animals, but in some of the connections that I made with humane societies and our humane officer up here in Marathon County, I just found that some of the needs in our community weren’t something that I had the ability to address within my timeline.
[00:02:14] So then I navigated back into some of the parks in my area and. Reached out to a few of them and the Council Grounds was one that had a park ranger on staff that had the time to be my project advisor and offer me some support and guidance along the way.
[00:02:29] Sheryl: Your project is much broader than some projects that we see.
[00:02:33] We, we, we will see people doing education about bat houses or pollinator gardens. You combined quite a few pieces into your project. Can you tell us why you took that path?
[00:02:48] Elsie: Part of it was probably that fear of not meeting all of the requirements for the goal, the word that we all worry about. I was tackling my project right at the end of my senior year.
[00:02:59] I will admit that I submitted my proposal 2 weeks before I graduated high school and got my proposal approved. Probably right around the same week of my graduation. So I was really pushing the end of the diet deadline. It was definitely really nervous that if I limited myself too much, that I guess maybe I wouldn’t have enough to work on, which is not the truth at all.
[00:03:21] There were times where I definitely was worried. I’d been off more than I could chew. But it did let me kind of dabble in a little bit of everything. And I think it also let me. Connect with people more and show them, you know, in your own backyard, there are little things that you can do. There are big things that you can do.
[00:03:39] And some require a lot of construction skills that I don’t even have myself and needed support for and others are simple things that you can do with items that you have in your own house or that you might already be doing in your backyard and can do more of. And so that was 1 benefit of kind of broadening it to try and reach a broader audience and get more people engaged in the project.
[00:04:02] Sheryl: Who was on your team and how did you lead them?
[00:04:05] Elsie: That first person that I kind of briefly mentioned was the park ranger up at the Council Grounds. She was my project advisor, a very busy lady being the head of a state park and having to meet many state regulations which are very crucial. And so I did my best to be prepared for her and not cause added Stress and job to her, but hopefully do more of a service for the park.
[00:04:31] So she was. On my team, I always again, when I was meeting with her, I would always try and have a document lined up pretty good of okay. Here’s the aspects of my project. Here’s the step. We’re on some of the permission I need from you before I can move forward. some of those things. My dad was a huge aspect of my team because he has the construction experience.
[00:04:53] So I would find blueprints for him and then I would do all of the research for our materials. He’d sometimes give me some guidance for what Stores to look at and what not to price shop and I thankfully had a lot of family members that had some lumber lying around that I could borrow from as well.
[00:05:13] So he was a big part of my team. My mom and brother stepped in here and there to help with some of the construction pieces as well. The friends of the council ground state park was also a huge help. I went to 1 of their monthly meetings and presented to them. What I was doing what my project was because many of them had not heard of it before when it was in those early planning stages and then kind of proposed some help from them.
[00:05:38] So they have agreed. To help with kind of general observation of the physical components at the park, as I’m not able to, especially those bird houses to keep those. Cleaned out annually, and then the bat house to make sure that there’s no, like, wasp nets or other. Predators moving into there, and for them, and for the park in general, 1 of my final things that I made for them was a binder.
[00:06:04] That had all of those instructions for how to continue maintenance on those aspects as well as I tucked in some educational resources. So if may, or. The park naturalist wanted to do any educational aspects using my resources. They would have all that for them.
[00:06:20] Sheryl: You also created a website. Can you tell us how you chose what you put on your website?
[00:06:25] Elsie: I wanted that to be one of the things that I could kind of make and then not have to go. And. Edit if you will, or keep putting in current information all the time because I am a busy college students. So I figured I’d keep the Facebook page as my aspect that I keep current and my website as long lasting.
[00:06:42] So I wanted to give it. 1st, the overview of what the project is, where it’s located, the. Background of it all tried to add in some documents to show that there is a true issue here. I included 1. PDF from the Wisconsin DNR that had our entire list of endangered species, which is well over 100 in animals alone.
[00:07:06] And then plants are much more. So I included that in there. And then I wanted to offer a little bit of things to keep people of all ages engaged. So I have one tab that’s just kid friendly activities. And then some of those other aspects of some plants that you can add to your garden, how to build your birdhouse or bat house of your own.
[00:07:26] I think I even have cooking recipes on there because butterfly love dill. And if you love pickles yourself, then you and your butterflies in your backyard can share that love of dill and some fun cooking recipes as well. So I tried to reach a broad audience on there.
[00:07:45] Sheryl: What was your biggest challenge during your project and how did you overcome it?
[00:07:49] Elsie: I think a little bit twofold. The first one that I kind of have been reflecting on afterwards was with that state park not realizing that there would be a lot of red tape that you have to cross and rightfully so because they are protecting this natural area and all of the resources there and realizing that it is really one person that park ranger that you need to go through for everything because She knows what’s going on at the park, and she knows all of these government mandates and requirements that need to be met and maintained at the park.
[00:08:23] And she was amazing to work with. Complete props to her. But it was that challenge of how can I get her support without overloading her knowing that she already is also maintaining all of these red tapes for every other person that uses the park and making sure that all of these regulations are followed.
[00:08:41] So that was a challenge that I think I wasn’t entirely expecting and had to learn along the way and navigate. And then that time crunch, of course. Realizing that I had three months to get my work in really from the time that I submitted my proposal until that final September 30th. Date was nerve wracking, but I did my best to again, keep organized.
[00:09:06] As far as my other commitments went that summer, I knew that I wanted to get my gold award and I was really passionate about this project. So I did not tack on other. Jobs and activities and commitments, because I wanted this to be my focus and put my best effort and not make it just a bare minimum scratching the surface of what a gold award can be.
[00:09:26] Sheryl: What did you learn about yourself during the project?
[00:09:29] Elsie: The level of organization and focus that I was able to have because I am a chronic procrastinator, which is a big challenge. Probably part of why I did not submit my proposal until the month of my graduation. But once I got to it and I found this thing that I was so passionate about, it really.
[00:09:54] Kind of came easily. It was nervous nerve wracking the whole time, but I was really good at sitting down and working on things, navigating some of those issues of coming across something and saying, Oh, no, this doesn’t work the way I hoped it would like the website was not my original. Idea it kind of came across later as I need another way to measure how many people are accessing my resources and using my project.
[00:10:23] So the website and Facebook page were kind of a later idea. And then I had to learn how to do that. And. I guess that alone, I’m not very tech savvy all the time, but I figured it out and it worked out really good. Communication skills. I think I sometimes I like to think that I’m good with people, but also I am a super nervous person too.
[00:10:44] So getting over that fear of picking up the phone and making a call, standing in front of a group and presenting. Being on the news was an unexpected surprise but yeah, I learned that I can be pretty good at keeping organized, knowing what I’m doing, flying by the seat of my pants a little bit with those surprises yeah, it was really good.
[00:11:07] It was a great experience for sure.
[00:11:10] Sheryl: Do you have a favorite memory from your project?
[00:11:12] Elsie: I think it probably would be those educational sessions at the park, getting to see people engage. I never, I didn’t have a huge turnout for any of them. I think the biggest one was maybe 10 or 12 and there was definitely a good handful in my own family that came to a lot of them.
[00:11:28] But there always seemed to be at least someone not related to me that would walk away with some of my resources, super excited to do it in their backyard. I even remember, I think my second session where we had like a little boy, real tiny thing, big chubby cheeks, just adorable. And him and his mom in there doing my little like bird feeder and butterfly feeder crafts that I had for them.
[00:11:50] All excited. And so it was, it was really great to see. And then that unexpected surprise of the news showing up, I was not ready for it. Kind of fun to feel a little bit special and whatnot beyond the local news and have that shared everywhere and shared the project a little bit more and brought more attention to it, which is awesome.
[00:12:10] Sheryl: You’ve also earned your silver and bronze awards. Do you remember your projects?
[00:12:15] Elsie: Yes, so my bronze award that was back in fifth grade, I believe, and it was something that our whole troop worked on together. We always had our meetings at my elementary school, so our troop leader had the idea that we could kind of give back to the elementary school and we organized their lost and found bin.
[00:12:32] So we got them like a nice clothing rack and helped hang everything up really nice and kind of, they had them. Big box that was overfilled with all of the elementary kid things that get left behind and helped organize that nicely. So that was definitely a simpler, I won’t claim to have had much involvement in the planning and whatnot of that.
[00:12:52] The troop leader definitely had a strong hand in leading that one. But first little dabbling a bigger project and helping the community. And then my silver award I did with two other girls in my troop. And we did a little lending library for 1 of the parks in our area. It was something that they wanted anyways kind of a need.
[00:13:13] And so we were able to build that for them. And each of us conducted book drives at our local churches and our schools to help build those the library. And then we took our extra books and we printed off some little bookmarks and we went and donated all of the books and bookmarks to local daycares and Sunday schools and elementary school classes, whoever we could think of that might need some more books.
[00:13:39] And we tried to make it just a big encouragement of the accessibility of reading and learning to young age all around us. That was fun.
[00:13:48] Sheryl: What other Girl Scout experiences do you have?
[00:13:51] Elsie: My biggest one would be my troop took a trip to New York City a few years ago. So that was so much fun. And also a ton of projects along the way to do our money earning activities leading up to that.
[00:14:04] That was probably 4 years worth of money earning partly because coven pushed back our trip a time or 2, but gave us more time to keep earning that money for our trip. And we got to go there. We learned a lot about the history of the city, you know, at the 9, 11 memorial. Statue of Liberty some of those things we stayed right close to Times Square.
[00:14:28] A lot of the members of my troop are super involved in theater and I grew up being involved in dance. So we got to go to some of those shows. My personal favorite was the American Ballet Theater put on Don Quixote at the Metropolitan Opera House. But I got to go to one of those shows. It was amazing.
[00:14:45] And then while we were there, we got to visit Girl Scout Central, which is so cool. Not many people can say they do. I have a fun little patch hiding on the back of my vest somewhere. I think it happened to be the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting, the year that we went to. So we got a patch for that and the patch for visiting Girl Scout Central.
[00:15:05] Definitely a highlight and a good way to kind of end out the experience in those final Girl Scout years.
[00:15:11] Sheryl: Are you still friends with the girls that you were in the troop with?
[00:15:14] Elsie: I am absolutely. So 1 member is actually my cousin. We’ve been scouting together since 1st grade. So I joined scouting in kindergarten and then she joined right after me.
[00:15:24] And so we’ve been scouting together forever. And then after elementary school, going into 6th grade, we had to move over to a different troop. So the 2 of us went to that together and it was all new girls. And I think the troop leader was actually someone that had been my troop leader my very 1st year of scouting.
[00:15:40] So after taking a little break away from her, it was nice to go back to my roots of my very first troop leader and meet all kinds of girls. One of them, I can say is absolutely my best friend in the whole world. I love her. She’s a year younger than me, but actually beat me to the gold award by one year.
[00:15:56] And so she kind of acted as a little mentor to me along my gold award journey as well. So I keep in contact with her almost every day. And then. Just a week or two ago, I did get together with the rest of the troupe and we went and all had dinner together and did like a little gift exchange. And it was a really good time.
[00:16:14] Sheryl: Yeah, I suppose with you going away to school, it was an unusual year that you didn’t. connect with those girls on a regular basis.
[00:16:22] Elsie: Yes. I had to see their pictures and listen to their experiences of going on like their first camp out that I wasn’t with them on and whatnot. And there were three other girls that were also seniors.
[00:16:33] So we’re all kind of in that same boat of getting to watch from afar. Now as our last couple of members finished up their girl scouting experience, get to hear all the juicy gossip behind the scenes of what’s going on. But No, it’s really fun to see what they’re all involved in still and watching them wrap up that experience too.
[00:16:53] Sheryl: You mentioned that you’re attending UW Madison. Can you share with us what your hopes and dreams are for the future?
[00:17:00] Elsie: In line with my Gold Award project, I have a huge passion for animal welfare. So I am studying animal and veterinary biosciences. Getting my bachelor’s degree in that, and then hoping to go on to vet school after that.
[00:17:13] While I’ve been home on winter break now, I’ve been shadowing in a local vet clinic, getting to see lots of small animal appointments and surgeries, go on some horse calls, which has been a ton of fun and further fueling my passion for a little bit of large animal medicine. So now I’m just hoping to continue getting experience with a whole wide range of animals as much as I can.
[00:17:35] Cause in vet school, veterinarians learn how to treat. Every species of animal and then I’m sure 1 day, I’ll land on a little bit more of a specialty. But for now, exploring all of it. Yeah, can’t wait. Be able to give back to wild or at animals, I should say in that regard and so their health and welfare.
[00:17:54] Sheryl: Well, good luck. Is there anything you haven’t shared that you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:17:59] Elsie: Definitely follow my Facebook page because I try and post as much as I can. I am due to add another post yet before I go back to break. But I try and keep things updated on there. I am learning about animals.
[00:18:10] So I’m hoping to use my education to share on there, but otherwise I try and share as many resources as I can about animals about wildlife, about how you can help them in your backyard. So that is active, please follow council grounds, state park, wildlife habitat. Other than that, I would say. Do not procrastinate on starting your gold award.
[00:18:36] It is intimidating, and I know that’s why I didn’t start. There’s always the excuses of, Oh, sophomore year is so busy. Junior year is so busy. Senior year, fall, it’s so busy. College applications. Senior year spring is panic time. If you are trying to get your gold award done, it is not fun. Your local council members will probably make fun of you when you submit your proposal to them and they will joke and pick on you and ask you why you waited so long.
[00:19:09] Not a fun experience.
[00:19:12] Sheryl: It’s, it’s, it’s a lot of pressure to wait that long.
[00:19:15] Elsie: They might be a little more willing to help you if it’s not right before your senior year or end of your senior year.
[00:19:22] Sheryl: And we will have the links to your Facebook page and your website in the show notes. How do you make your s’mores?
[00:19:30] Elsie: The crucial piece that everyone misses. Is holding your s’more way above the flames and smoke first, your marshmallow and just slowly rotating it, getting it nice and gooey until it’s about to fall off the stick. And then, when it’s at that point of being so melty and delicious. Then I shove it in the flames and get it crispy and black and then pull it out quick, have a hand under it because you might drop it and then your dogs will get it and that’s not good for them.
[00:20:00] So hold your hand under it, carry it back to your, whenever your sandwich of choices. I use the classic graham cracker and chocolate, sometimes spice it up with like a little thin peanut butter cup or like a chocolate that’s filled with like caramel or something delicious like that. Put your melty marshmallow on it, and then it will be melty and warm enough that it will actually melt your chocolate.
[00:20:22] If you don’t take the step to melt it and get it nice and gooey, then your chocolate’s not going to melt either. And that’s no fun.
[00:20:29] Sheryl: I concur. Well, thanks for joining us today.
[00:20:35] Elsie: Thank you for having me.
[00:20:37] Sheryl: Make sure to click follow or subscribe so you always know when new episodes are released. Power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:20:46] 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 youtube.com/SherylMRobinson.
[00:21:09] Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.