Walter: [00:00:00] 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: [00:00:14] Welcome to hearts of gold. Today we have Beth with us. Hi, Beth.
[00:00:19] Beth: [00:00:19] Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:00:20] Sheryl: [00:00:20] I’m very glad for you to join us. Can you tell us about your girl scout gold award project?
[00:00:26] Beth: [00:00:26] The project is called regrown gold award. for my project, I worked with my local environmental center, the Somerset County environmental center, and I created a documentary to educate my community and share some of the benefits of prescribed burns, which is actually one of the processes they use to help preserve, their land.
[00:00:44]so prescribed burns. Our process at basically they burn over a field completely. And in, even though it seems like it could be destructive, it actually helps to prevent wildfires. It helps to prevent native species preserve diversity, within the meadow itself. so these are all things that are really exciting to me as somebody who loves the environment and loves learning about these things.
[00:01:05]but unfortunately I’ve learned that it gets kind of a negative, perspective for many people who don’t know that fire can really have this positive outcome as opposed to a negative one. so for my project, I combined my passion for ecology and, filmmaking and made a documentary that highlights a lot of these benefits, by collecting footage over months of the meadow, as it regrows, after this prescribed burn, highlighting many of the native species that it protects.
[00:01:31]and some of the biodiversity that we see in the meadow. Along with this documentary over the course of a few months, I also created a webpage, some social media pages, news articles, and at the very end posters to share the documentary, a share link to the documentary on trails and kiosks around the center.
[00:01:49] Sheryl: [00:01:49] So you said that you chose this project because it combined your love of ecology and femology. Lots of times girls have trouble identifying a problem to solve and skills that they haveand combining those.
[00:02:03] You have an example here of two things that don’t seem to go together that worked very well. How did you work through that? How did you identify it in the beginning?
[00:02:11] Beth: [00:02:11] For me, I always knew I wanted to do something, with the environmental center that came very naturally. since it’s kind of defined my whole girl scout career, I always, we go back there for badges to do fun activities like canoeing.
[00:02:24]my bronze award was actually helping, with a garden there and we consulted with an environmentalist for my silver award. so that part felt very natural. Bringing in the film was something that, like you said, it’s kind of hard to think of like what skills you can bring in to help solve a problem.
[00:02:41] I wanted to help spread awareness about prescribed burns and my, advisor was very helpful in. Bringing together, these links. So I went to talk with him, around February and we just kind of had a meeting, and discussed what really could be done and what he thought would be cool. What I thought would be cool.
[00:02:58] I have lots of different interests. Like I’m sure many girl Scouts do many things that they’re willing to bring in and create a gold award out of, for me, it was natural, but I would definitely say, you know, look at it from different perspectives. don’t just consider like, Head on solution.
[00:03:14] Sheryl: [00:03:14] You mentioned going to Somerset for other girl scout activities. How did that inspire you?
[00:03:18] Beth: [00:03:18] It’s been kind of brewing, I guess, over many years. It’s just a really beautiful place. like naturally the park is pretty big there’s trails all around. And my fondest memories as a girl scout are definitely all there. So that definitely kind of inspired the like love for the environment that really drove the project.
[00:03:38] Because I feel like at the end of the day, you’re not going to be successful or it will be more difficult to be successful with a project like this. if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, because it does kind of provide the spark. like for me, it was the spark to, okay. Do I want to go walk a mile and get pictures of the meadow this morning? Yes, I do, because I love it. And it’s something that drives me to take action.
[00:04:04] Sheryl: [00:04:04] How did your film skills improve during your project?
[00:04:08] Beth: [00:04:08] Before this, a lot of like the little film projects I had made were very short and like I said, this project was over the course of many months from about February to July, of collecting footage of the meadow.
[00:04:21] And I couldn’t really bring volunteers to help with me since the coronavirus pandemic, especially right in the beginning, we weren’t sure how, like how bad it was. There was a lot of like, just really staying isolated. We didn’t know like wearing a masks helped yet. So I really had to, I guess, individually hone in on my own skills and it’s definitely helped me to learn a lot from the technical standpoint, but also from the standpoint of.
[00:04:46] What is the most helpful way to present information for other people to learn? One of the things that I did was I created a first, first draft of an edit and shared that with a lot of my volunteers who would have otherwise actually gone and helped me film the meadow. they came in at the end and they watched it and gave me feedback, which was really instrumental for me to learn about what’s the best way to educate people, to make my gold award a success.
[00:05:12] Sheryl: [00:05:12] What do you know now about the gold award project that you didn’t know before you?
[00:05:17] Beth: [00:05:17] Oh, one thing in particular that I learned about that I’m definitely taking with me is a lot about the native species. it was really exciting to see them growing back and to learn about like the particular ones that
[00:05:29] butterflies like, or the particular ones that help small animals or insects or help, you know, the soil. And they’re very specific to my community. And I loved sharing those with other people, like those plants. And I totally didn’t expect to learn that much about the native species. I expected more to focus on like the prescribed burn aspect and the regrowing, but actually learning about these species was very exciting.
[00:05:53] Sheryl: [00:05:53] Do you have a special memory from your project that you’d like to share?
[00:05:56]Beth: [00:05:56] The first time that I actually went to see the meadow, it’s called Alexander’s meadow and, it’s about 10, 15 minute walk. If you’re walking quickly through the woods to get there, it’s actually quite close to the road. So when this park shut down due to coronavirus, it was just shut down for about a month.
[00:06:16] And I wasn’t able to actually go on the trails, which was kind of frustrating at first, because it was a month for the most like growth was happening. It was, you know, around March and April, I was actually able to, we were able to drive the car park on the road and you’re. Where the meadow is, and you could just barely see the very side of the meadow, in, so I have some good memories of just driving up there and parking and trying my best to get pictures.
[00:06:43] Even when we couldn’t, you know, walk in the trails and get pictures.
[00:06:46] Sheryl: [00:06:46] You mentioned, you’ve also earned your bronze and silver awards. Can you tell us about those projects?
[00:06:50]Beth: [00:06:50] For my bronze award, that was a while ago at this point, but, my whole troop, which at that point was much larger than it is now, helped to plant some plants for the environmental centers garden.
[00:07:02]we researched some insect repellent plants and helps to kind of replenish, the plants that they had there. And then for myself or a word, which I worked on with two other girls in my troop, we. Did a project to educate the community on bats and how they benefit, you know, our community. And we also built some bat boxes and distributed them around to different homes.
[00:07:24]people volunteered to hang them up at their houses. And for that one, we actually consulted with, an environmentalist at the environmental center.
[00:07:32] Sheryl: [00:07:32] How do you feel that the bronze and silver awards prepared you for the gold award?
[00:07:37] Beth: [00:07:37] I think the silver award in particular was, instrumental to teaching me how to plan out a whole project.
[00:07:45] When you look at somebody else who’s done a gold award, it seems like. They have their whole project put together. It’s, you know, perfectly laid out there, but really it’s kind of more of an organic process and there’s no way at the beginning, you can really know all the steps you’re going to have to take.
[00:08:02] But through the silver award, I really learned how to come up with this like base plan, stay organized along the way. Consult with experts in the field. Just go step by, step through your project and see where it evolves and not get overwhelmed by doing something that’s so independent and unique.
[00:08:20] Sheryl: [00:08:20] What other girl scout memories do you have to share?
[00:08:22] Beth: [00:08:22] We did a first aid badge and we had, a first responder come and teach us, you know, how to do first aid. And that one was definitely fun since we got to practice doing like CPR on mannequins and stuff. That one was early in middle school. So it was very exciting to do that.
[00:08:37] Sheryl: [00:08:37] What are your future plans?
[00:08:39] Beth: [00:08:39] I actually recently found out that I got accepted into college, into a school of engineering.
[00:08:45] I’m going to study computer science term, very excited about, and hopefully I’m going to minor in something related to ecology or the environment combined technology and ecology. In my career, I still, my future plans also involve watching a lot of films and documentaries because I will always love that.
[00:09:04]so yeah, that’s what my plans are.
[00:09:06] Sheryl: [00:09:06] How do you make your smores?
[00:09:07] Beth: [00:09:07] Definitely on the basic side with how I make some words, but one time I tried putting some chopped up berries on and, and I thought that made it pretty good.
[00:09:16] Sheryl: [00:09:16] Interesting. Well, thank you for joining us today.
[00:09:19] Beth: [00:09:19] Thank you for having me.
[00:09:20] Sheryl: [00:09:20] Make sure to click subscribe so you always know when new episodes are released. And don’t forget to power your passion and conquer your challenges.
[00:09:32] Walter: [00:09:32] The hearts of gold podcast is brought to you by the grow and shared network produced by off the Walter media productions. Thank you for listening and spreading the word on what we do.
[00:09:41] If you want to share your story of how you earned your gold award, reach out and send an email to growandshare@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 that’s youtube.com/Sheryl, the letter M, Robinson. Take care and we’ll see you next time.
