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 Erica with us. Hi Erica.
[00:00:19]Erica: [00:00:19] Hi!
[00:00:20] Sheryl: [00:00:20] Can you tell us about your girl scout gold award project?
[00:00:23] Erica: [00:00:23] For my gold award project, I interviewed 18 local veterans and wrote up their stories and put their stories into an 84 page book. I designed and made that book available at my local historical society.
[00:00:38] And at my local library and my school’s library. And along with publishing the book, I also created my town’s first veterans day celebration with a veterans panel to increase community awareness about veterans. And along with increasing community awareness, I created an interactive program for elementary students to teach them about the origins of veterans day and Memorial day.
[00:01:04] Sheryl: [00:01:04] What interested you about veterans that you chose that as your theme for your project?
[00:01:09] Erica: [00:01:09] I was five with my girl scout troop. I’d been delivering cookies to veterans on veterans day and every year I remembered. That the veterans would wait by their doors for our arrival. And when we got there, they would show us badges and newspaper clippings, and there would be such these vivid stories.
[00:01:29] And a lot of them said that they had never been asked about their service besides close family members. So as I was thinking of gold word projects, I knew I wanted to capture these veterans’ stories and make them available in a greater community resource.
[00:01:45] Sheryl: [00:01:45] Why did you choose to do a book?
[00:01:47] Erica: [00:01:47] Well, I thought that the book would be more accessible than simply going online at first because I could capture the photos and I could also show Matt.
[00:01:59] And I thought it would also be easier for people to be able to flip through the stories, to see them chronologically from the world war two veterans, all the way through to the modern African and Iraq conflict.
[00:02:11] Sheryl: [00:02:11] You shared the stories in a few other ways, in addition to your book. How would you do that?
[00:02:16] Erica: [00:02:16] I also shared the stories online through the website I created.
[00:02:21] And one of the interesting things about the website was that I could share the audio recordings of my interviews, which was a format that I couldn’t share in a book. And I thought that was interesting because people could hear the actual veterans speaking instead of. You know, having a transcribed version and pairing both the written and the audio tapes, I think makes for a more in depth research into the veteran and his experiences, his, or her experiences.
[00:02:50] Sheryl: [00:02:50] What was your biggest challenge during your project and how did you overcome it?
[00:02:53] Erica: [00:02:53] As I got more into writing these stories and designing the book, I realized that this was a very big project. And along with that came, you know, all these pictures and these badges I wanted to capture in color. And so. I think one of the challenges for me was I didn’t want to short change any of these pictures and I wanted to give them full color pages and, and bright badges like they deserved.
[00:03:22] And so raising money to print a large, full color book was, was definitely challenging at first. So I had to. Pre-sale copies and run bake sales in order to raise money, to have a full color and also a glossy page book.
[00:03:40] Sheryl: [00:03:40] What else did you learn as you went through the process of editing and publishing your book that would be helpful for the audience to know?
[00:03:47] Erica: [00:03:47] I would record these interviews. My first step was to transcribe the audio tapes into a written format so that I could capture dates and places of where these service members served. But I was realizing in doing this, that there, these stories were so vivid and they were so emotional in some cases that I really wanted to capture them in a story format.
[00:04:09] I didn’t simply want to begin every single piece with. The veteran was born on such and such date and, you know, New York or Florida, I wanted to make it compelling so that people felt that these stories were distinguished. And I think that that’s something that when you go into the writing process takes a little longer to find the place where you can put emphasis on the story and figure out what is the most crucial thing the veterans said or inexperienced that could be engaging.
[00:04:39] Just start with, and that was certainly a new step in my writing process that I had to consider.
[00:04:45] Sheryl: [00:04:45] What did you learn about the gold award process as you went through it that you didn’t know before?
[00:04:50] Erica: [00:04:50] How important it is to. Record and to capture the moments that you have during your project. I think that when we’re doing these kinds of projects, we can get lost in the moment, which is a wonderful feeling of course.
[00:05:05] But looking back that there were more places where I could have captured photos and videos. And I think that that’s one of the most useful tools of our generation in terms of gold awards, is that we have the ability to capture and to record the instances we have with people and with different events.
[00:05:25] And so one of the things I learned as I went along and I became more familiar with. With sitting down and figuring out and taking the time to capture those moments during the project from veteran interviews to just simply putting together poster boards and, and setting up posters around town.
[00:05:44] Sheryl: [00:05:44] Who did you have on your team and how did they help you?
[00:05:46] Erica: [00:05:46] One of the people I had on my team was my local historical society, the new castle historical society. And they were really helpful resource for me because they had contacts with veterans. And they also introduced me to the library of Congress method of veteran interviews, which sets out these standards for how to conduct interviews with veterans.
[00:06:12] From copying down certain information, important information like rank and branch and title to just the length of a proper interview and getting the right release forms for these interviews. So throughout the process, having the historical society there for me was a really great resource. And when it came.
[00:06:36] Time in the summer. And I could see that veteran’s day was coming up. I actually partnered with one of the people on their board and us together helped put together the event that I created, which was the first veteran’s day event for my town.
[00:06:52] Sheryl: [00:06:52] What’s a favorite moment from your project?
[00:06:55] Erica: [00:06:55] Teaching one of the local girl scout troops, who I talked to, and the reason for that was in the weeks leading up to that, I was, struggling to find a way to make it engaging because they were, you know, seven, eight year olds. And I knew they were going to be high energy and excited, but how do you capture something that sometimes veteran related issues can feel so distant, especially if you don’t have veterans in your family. But I was very happy that when I brought in the games and the books and I told them the stories, how really engaged they were, they were asking questions.
[00:07:32] And even one of the veterans I held up, they said, Oh, that’s my neighbor. I didn’t know he was a veteran. And I think that was such a great moment for the project in general, because not just eight year olds, but I think. Us all forget. Sometimes that veterans are the people who are our neighbors and our doctors and our teachers.
[00:07:51] And there’s these hidden stories under people who we would normally associate with other professions. And so it was a great moment for me too. Share in that joy of telling and also getting excited about these stories with this younger generation of people.
[00:08:06] Sheryl: [00:08:06] What did you learn about yourself through the project?
[00:08:09] Erica: [00:08:09] I’ve always loved to write and I’ve always loved writing, but most of my writing has mostly taken place before high school in, in the fictional world. And this was the first time where I had an opportunity to collect. Primary source material and use it in my writing. And that for me, taught me, first of all, that I could, I was capable of writing compelling nonfiction, but also learning myself how to, how to do a process like this.
[00:08:41] That’s very different than say writing. A short story or a poem. This is all about details and where somebody was stationed, the dates that they were stationed there. And I think that that’s something that I had to grow into and I think it’s made me a better writer.
[00:08:57] Sheryl: [00:08:57] What other girl scout experiences have you had?
[00:09:00] Erica: [00:09:00] Silver award project, which I completed in eighth grade. And for the project I created a nutrition book and games cart for my local food pantry. And I created the card after. I realized after volunteering for many years, with my girl scout troop there helping to stock food that many of the clients and their children.
[00:09:22] Can wait for hours with nothing to do. And so I wanted to have this educational resource that was both entertaining and taught kids about nutrition. And I think that that’s been really meaningful to me because I’ve continued to work with my local food pantry. And I think that’s a great example of how girl Scouts can open you to a new door of opportunities and you can really grow from there.
[00:09:48] Sheryl: [00:09:48] I also know that as a girl scout, you were involved in national. Thank you first responders day. Can you tell us about that day?
[00:09:54] Erica: [00:09:54] So my troop created thank you first responders day. And the purpose of think of their responders was to send cards, goodies anything really to think the fire department, the police and the ambulance Corps, especially since the fire department and the ambulance car are comprised of volunteers who spend their holidays and their weekends attending to calls, emergency calls. And it was one of a great experience where I learned public speaking because my true path to address our County board and we had to stand up there and propose our events in front of a very serious panel of people.
[00:10:41] And I think that that gave me a lot of confidence going into my gold award a few years later, speaking to veterans and to West point officials. What are your future plans? I am looking to write more. I’m very excited to continue writing. And I think along with that, I’d really like to expand my veteran’s project and hopefully create a national organization that promotes other people, including girls Scouts and also non girl Scouts.
[00:11:14] To go and interview the veterans and their communities. I think that I would like to find a way to perhaps fund these interviews and provide resources because what I’ve realized is that I was so lucky to speak to world war II veterans. And I was able to capture their stories, but unfortunately, you know, as we get older, these veterans’ stories become less accessible.
[00:11:41] And I think that capturing them and getting those stories for future generations to read is really important.
[00:11:49] Sheryl: [00:11:49] Is there anything else you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:11:51] Erica: [00:11:51] About the gold award in, in general, I would say is that there’s there’s room to expand off of what is considered your, your award and your project.
[00:12:02] Because my project started with writing a book and. I thought that that would be the end of it. But from there hearing some of the Vietnam veterans especially talk about returning to no thanks or even resentment, when they got home, I realized that I wanted to find a way to honor them today.
[00:12:24] And so I created my events. And from there I created, you know, girl scout, programming and elementary school programming. The standup veteran’s day event I created was a socially distanced way to honor veterans this veteran state. And I think one of the lessons from all of this it’s just that the girl scout gold award can be a greatbridge into a passion.
[00:12:51] And that’s certainly grown for me. I’ve taken my passion outside of school, and I’ve also had the opportunity to continue it inside a school with using my interviews actually in a semester long research paper that I wrote. And so I think that one of the amazing things about the goal, the word is that.
[00:13:10] It’s eye-opening and it’s also something that can get you really excited about a new field that you would never have delved into so deeply.
[00:13:20] Sheryl: [00:13:20] Thank you for joining us today.
[00:13:21] Erica: [00:13:21] Thank you so much.
[00:13:23] Sheryl: [00:13:23] Don’t forget to click subscribe. So you always know when new episodes are released and power, your passion, and conquer your challenges.
[00:13:33] Walter: [00:13:33] 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. If you want to share your story of how you earned your gold award, reach out and send an email to growandshare@outlook.com.
[00:13:51] 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.
