[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 Amelia with us. Hi, Amelia.
[00:00:16] Amelia: Hi.
[00:00:18] Sheryl: Can you tell us about your Girl Scout Gold Award project?
[00:00:21] Amelia: So my Girl Scout Gold Award project was creating an app called Historic Lamont, and it is a location aware walking tour app of my town, and it covers sort of the hidden gems that are just like There, you never think about them, but there’s so much history and so much has happened there.
[00:00:46] And I just wanted to share that with my community.
[00:00:49] Sheryl: And just for perspective, Lamont is a suburb of Chicago, correct?
[00:00:55] Amelia: Yes, it is.
[00:00:56] Sheryl: What prompted this project for you?
[00:00:59] Amelia: That I went on one of the walking tours from the Lamont Historical Society. I’d been trying to go on one for a few years, but there’s really limited availability.
[00:01:14] It’s like annual or semi annual and only 20 people could go. Even though I’m a hist I’m a huge history nerd. Like I’m thinking about majoring in history at college. I had never come across some of the interesting things and interesting places that had happened in my town. And I have lived in Lamont my whole life.
[00:01:36] My mom’s been here her whole life and. I, I’m a long time. I am the mantra. I’ve never heard of a
[00:01:45] this. So I just wanted to share it.
[00:01:47] Sheryl: What’s an example of one of the interesting history facts you learned by working on your project?
[00:01:52] Amelia: One of my favorite places that I came across on my During my project is the local metro station.
[00:02:02] It’s just this small stone building. I’ve never really gone over there, but it turns out that not only did it witness the passing of President Lincoln’s funeral train. It also was 1 of the sites of the Lamont massacre. A lot of towns. People were waiting there because there was news that. There was a garrison sent down from Chicago to try to quell the unrest because the quarry workers had been on strike.
[00:02:33] So they were sort of meeting there to try and corner the garrison workers before they could, I mean, garrison soldiers before they could get into the town. But it turns out they’d gone off at the previous stop. So there was no actual conflict there.
[00:02:47] Sheryl: And you created an app for your project. Can you tell us what your app does and how you chose to do an app?
[00:02:57] Amelia: So my app, you can open it up and you can select one of three tours. One is a tour of all of the 31 sites. Another is a shorter tour for those who aren’t able to walk as much or maybe have small kids. And the third is a tour of Lamont’s churches since Lamont’s known for their skyline of many, many, many churches.
[00:03:25] And once you select one of those, it will take you to a map and you’re starting out at the Old Stone Church, which is the Lamont Historical Society’s location, and then it gives you directions. To the next site on the tour and your location is there as well. So you don’t get lost. And then once you click on a site for the tour, it shows you a picture of the place and a brief description.
[00:04:00] And it also has an audio component that was recorded. I got the help of one of the students on the speech team at my school to help me record
[00:04:12] those.
[00:04:13] Sheryl: What was it like creating an app? That just seems overwhelming to me.
[00:04:19] Amelia: Yeah, it was pretty difficult because even though I had a lot of prior coding experience since it was an iOS app, you had to learn an entirely different language because Apple has to be special.
[00:04:32] Of course they do. And it was really different from the other programming languages I knew because before I coded just like small programs, but this was really visual. And. That was difficult. And also, to code for Apple, you have to get this specialized software and code in this thing called Xcode, which is, you can’t access on any other device, but an Apple computer.
[00:05:03] So that was the hard part. That’s actually what took the longest out of anything in my. Gold Award project, or one of the things that took the longest is actually obtaining an Apple computer. Luckily, my brother let me use his that he was using for college. So that was really nice of him. Otherwise, I would have had to like, gone out and bought one, which is not.
[00:05:32] That would mean a lot more fundraising than what I actually had to do.
[00:05:37] Sheryl: Who in your community helped you with this project?
[00:05:41] Amelia: First, I approached the Lamont Historical Society, and they gave me access to a list of sites that they had on their tour and some materials to help research those sites and some other sites.
[00:05:58] And then I went to my local history teacher. And he helped me by giving me a list of a few other sites that he took his students to that weren’t on the list already. After that, I approached the Lamont High School Historical Honor Society called RoCAPA. I worked with them to get the help of some of their students to write the actual descriptions because Since I was a member of RoCAPA, I noticed there wasn’t a lot of historical community service that was able to happen.
[00:06:38] Like, we were volunteering at basketball games and all that, and that was good for the community, but I didn’t think it really reflected RoCAPA’s values, so I just wanted to give the opportunity to be more involved with the history side. As well, and after that, I got help from the art honor society, since I cannot do art or graphic design or anything, and they helped me design my lovely logo that I have for my app.
[00:07:13] And lastly, I went to the speech team, as I previously mentioned, and they helped me record my audio descriptions since I, I tried podcasting once as a class. My voice was not bad for it. So, so they helped me record those and after that, I was able to get help from the Lamont sesquicentennial committee because I was making this app in part for the for Lamont’s 150th anniversary.
[00:07:53] Which was in June, and they let me have like a table at both of their events for that, that week of celebration. So that was very kind of them.
[00:08:05] Sheryl: Wow, that’s a lot of community involvement. Do you know how many hours in total, like, all your volunteers plus you put into this project? Because given all of that work that you just described, I imagine it had to have been over a thousand hours.
[00:08:22] Amelia: I put in, like, a hundred hours, not counting all the time it took to learn the language. So yeah, it could have been a
[00:08:31] thousand hours.
[00:08:32] Sheryl: Wow, that’s, that’s a great use of resources and expanding your project in a way that you may not have anticipated when you, you started when you had that inkling of that thought.
[00:08:45] I’m also impressed that you didn’t just mimic the, the Lamont history. Tour into your app and you actually expanded on it besides your history teachers, you know, suggesting those additional things. When you started, when you started thinking about your app and your tour what did you hope to achieve with it?
[00:09:10] Amelia: I hoped to give people in the Mott the opportunity. Tunity to sort of learn about all of these hidden gems, because as I mentioned, it was very difficult to actually be able to go on the tour. First, you had to actually get the tickets, which were limited, and then you had to have, like, the 2 hours to walk around and the physical capability to do so.
[00:09:41] Which is why I made that shorter tour because like I know children with, I mean parents with young children and like older people would not be able to handle the the hard walk. That is the society’s tour because Lamont is built on a hill, a very hilly hill. It’s like the hilliest part of Illinois basically.
[00:10:07] And that’s where we are.
[00:10:09] Sheryl: What was your biggest challenge during your project, and how did you overcome it besides the coding piece that we talked about?
[00:10:15] Amelia: Aside from actually getting the Apple computer, the other challenge was getting it through the process to get onto the App Store. A limited percentage of apps that actually apply to be on the App Store are actually let One to it because Apple has a very, they have a, an interesting screening process and that took around a month to get my app through that because not only does it take like a week to actually screen each app, you have to fill out a bunch of like information about your app.
[00:10:55] And it, my app didn’t make it through the first time because since it is a location aware app. The app developer, the app testers from Apple were testing it from California and they could not see the actual content of my app because they were too far away. So I had to like, go in, figure out why it wasn’t working and then ask them if they VPN or something to test the app.
[00:11:25] So that was difficult. Plus I had SenseMyApp does track locations. I had to make, like, legal forms, which I was not anticipating doing at all.
[00:11:38] Sheryl: What is your favorite memory from your project?
[00:11:41] Amelia: One of them was being able to walk around when it was all done and actually enjoy the tour. And another was walking around town.
[00:11:52] It was a really nice day. Because I couldn’t use like online images of all the sites, I’ve got to walk around and take like pictures of all the sites. That was a fun part. Downloading those all on my, onto my computer and getting the files all organized. That was not the fun part.
[00:12:13] Sheryl: What is something that you learned about the Gold Award process itself that could be helpful for other Girl Scouts?
[00:12:20] Amelia: Especially if you’re planning on having a deadline for your project, it’s best to start pretty early because my gosh, it was really stressful. My gold award. Took the application took, like, 6 months to get approved. I don’t know if this was just something that was unique to me, but it was really stressful because I started this process, like, a year in advance with fundraising and then it took until, like, October.
[00:12:56] To actually get it approved, and it was due in June, and I still had to learn the whole programming language. So allow yourself a good amount of time and for actually filling out the gold award application on gold gold, I would recommend actually writing longer responses than you think you need. Just so you don’t have to keep going back and getting checked.
[00:13:23] Just put a lot of effort into the initial application so you can then go and get started.
[00:13:31] Sheryl: Yep. There’s those 2000 character boxes. Use your 2000 characters and use them wisely. Don’t use filler words. Share as much of your thoughts as possible in those boxes. I a hundred percent agree. What is going on with your app now?
[00:13:48] Who’s managing it for you?
[00:13:50] Amelia: Since it is on the Apple App Store, there’s not a lot of management that’s needed, but I was able to, as part of my big gold award, like, campaigning push at the end for my app, I printed out, like, 500 business cards and I designed all those, and I I gave half of those out at the event, and I gave the other half to the Historical Society so that they could give those out to people who were interested in the tour.
[00:14:27] And it has a little QR code that takes you directly to a place on the Apple App Store where you can pur not purchase the app, because that’s free, but where you can download the app.
[00:14:41] Sheryl: What are your plans for the future?
[00:14:43] Amelia: This fall, I am going to be attending the University of Chicago, and I plan to major in computer science and probably history, but I’m considering economics since UChicago is known for their economics and I’ve I took AP Micro Macro this past year, and that was really interesting.
[00:15:07] So I’m not sure. And after that, I hope to work in the field of machine learning and AI. How are you using AI right now? I took a course this past year on machine learning through UC San Diego. I was actually able to create a few rudimentary neural networks that were able to like, identify a cat
[00:15:37] from a dog and differentiate the 2 through image search. So that was fine. And yeah, I plan to use AI in the future to, like, more interdisciplinary to for example, combine it with history and being able to, like, search through primary sources, or maybe try to expand and primary sources that have been shattered.
[00:16:04] It’s hard to glean more information or to, if I go into economics, to create better models for the economy, since it’s pretty, it’s very hard to predict the economy, but AI can hopefully help with that.
[00:16:22] Sheryl: What other Girl Scout experiences have you had?
[00:16:28] Amelia: I have helped out a lot at my local Girl Scout summer camp, and I first started, well, I attended there from like kindergarten through seventh grade.
[00:16:46] Then eighth grade was COVID. So I couldn’t, couldn’t do that. But after that, I was able to be a leader. And then I, since I was out of town for the year of camp last year, I was able to sort of mentor the girls and teach them, like, how to plan for their troops. Since being the leader means you have to, like, plan how to, like, Plan meals for your group for a week and plan all the activities.
[00:17:19] So that can be, like, before camp, it’s like a month long thing. So I sort of help the girls with that.
[00:17:25] Sheryl: I understand that you’ve received some scholarships because of Girl Scouts in your Gold Award too. Can you share that?
[00:17:31] Amelia: So recently, I received the 5, 000 Gold Award Scholarship for my council and that was really exciting.
[00:17:42] I can’t wait to use it for all the books and stuff, because this year’s going to be expensive, so that will help a lot.
[00:17:51] Sheryl: And I also understand that you have had other volunteer experiences and one of those volunteer experiences led to a job. Can you share about your volunteering and what, how that moved forward also?
[00:18:06] Amelia: I started volunteering at Northern Mill County Special Recreation Association. In my Sophomore year of high school, and I, it’s a program based it’s a program based agency where, where people with special needs are able to do a life sort of programs. Like I did more athletics, so I did the soccer program, the volleyball program, the basketball program, and I volunteered at those and just helped out.
[00:18:41] I coached. And it was really interesting in being able to volunteer like that since my older brother has autism. So I’ve been pretty active in that area for most of my life, volunteering at Special Olympics and other events for people with disabilities. So being able to volunteer there long term.
[00:19:06] Was really great and after I volunteered for around a year I was offered a job. To since they really enjoyed me being there as a volunteer, having a job there would allow me to have, like, more responsibility and be able to, like do things I couldn’t do when I was a volunteer. So, I still work there right now, but when I’m moving, when I’m going to college, I won’t be able to so I’m going to have to stop working there this fall.
[00:19:44] And that makes me. That’s sad, but I hope to, like, still be able to work, like, winter break camps and all that.
[00:19:53] Sheryl: What else would you like to share with the audience?
[00:19:56] Amelia: If you’re considering doing your gold award, and you’re, you’re not sure it sounds like too much work. I would highly, highly recommend doing it completely changes how you see not only your community, but yourself, you have no idea what you can do until you are able to, like, put your mind to a project and just work hard and like, it completely changed how I saw myself before.
[00:20:25] Before I started my project, I couldn’t even write an email. I was, no, I could not write a professional email at all, like, I didn’t even know you were supposed to, like, start off with like, hi, or something. I was just got straight into the business. So doing your gold award, let’s you do things.
[00:20:48] You had no idea you could possibly do. Like, I stood in front of people and talked before my cold award. Not an option. Speech class was awful. So yeah, it was a really great experience.
[00:21:04] Sheryl: How do you make your s’mores?
[00:21:05] Amelia: I make my s’mores with just the traditional way with graham crackers, marshmallow, chocolate, but I put peanut butter on the, well, first I either put peanut butter On the graham cracker, or as I discovered when we were out of graham crackers completely, I really enjoyed making them with a do si do Girl Scout cookie.
[00:21:32] And it was, it was nice. It was soft. It was very good. I made them at 2 a. m. while watching for the northern lights that never actually showed up.
[00:21:42] Sheryl: Oh, that’s sad. We, we had them for just a little bit where I am. I’m a little bit north of you. So what I saw was pretty it really, they tell you that you really need to take pictures because the camera pick up the colors so much better.
[00:21:56] And I did, I did feel that that was true. The pictures that I took made it look like we had much better pictures. Northern lights than what I saw with my naked eye.
[00:22:08] Amelia: Maybe they were there. I just didn’t look at it right.
[00:22:11] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at some points it was, it seemed just like a haze. And when you took a picture, there was actually colors in the picture.
[00:22:19] Sheryl: It was, it was a super interesting experience. So I was happy I experienced it, but yeah, they did not blow me away. So I look forward to trying again, though. I’m always willing to go out there and try again.
[00:22:31] Amelia: I heard this year is going to be pretty big for like solar activity and all that. So hopefully they will be back.
[00:22:37] Sheryl: Well, thanks for joining us today.
[00:22:39] Amelia: Thank you for having me. This was, it was really fun to be on the podcast.
[00:22:43] Sheryl: Good. I’m glad you had a good time. Make sure to click follow or subscribe. So you always know when new episodes are released, power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:22:57] Walter: Thank you for listening.
[00:22:58] 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.
[00:23:19] Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.