My Girl scout journey

I’m a Girl Scout.  I have been a Girl Scout for 13 years.  I started as a Daisy GS in 1st Grade, and now I’m an Ambassador Girl Scout. I am working on my Gold Award which is about Disability Awareness.  The Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. This project is important to me because I have a physical disability that affects all of the muscles in my body.  I know that sometimes people look at me and do not know what to say or do because I look different than most people.  I hope my project helps people understand that I am just like everyone else, but my disability means I might need to do things differently than most other people.  I want everyone to know that people with disabilities are more like them as a person than the differences that they see when they look at some people with disabilities.  Here is my Girl Scout story.

I was born in China. I was born with a disability called Cerebral Palsy. CP makes it hard for me to move my muscles the way I want them to move.  I lived in a foster home, Living Tree foster home, in China until I was 6 1/2 years old. Then I was adopted into my ‘forever family’ and I moved to California. I use a wheelchair to ‘walk’ and an AAC device to talk. I also use a lot of other technology and equipment to do almost everything in my life. 

Girl Scouts was the first group that I joined when I moved here from China.  In GS I learned how to work in a group and to be proud of myself  for everything I do.  My GS friends and leaders helped me a lot. They were always thinking about what I could do and what I would need help doing. They also made sure that any GS activities we would do or places we would go could accommodate me and my wheelchair and other equipment.

Some of the things I have done during my 13 years of girl scouts were making gifts for my GS sisters and other people, lots of arts, crafts, music, camping, making and tasting different kinds of foods, especially during GS Thinking Day, planting flags for Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, going places like the Aquarium, Zoo, movies, plays, musicals, and so much more.  I earned lots of GS Daisy Petals, Try-It’s, Badges, and Journey’s. Last, as a Girl Scout I learned about finance, working as a team, time management and lots of other stuff selling the famous Girl Scout cookies.  I sold about 250-500 boxes of cookies every year, even the past 2 years, when I have had to sell cookies virtually because of COVID and my health concerns. 

Now I am in my final years as a Girl Scout and this is my final GS project, the Girl Scout Gold Award. The Girl Scout Gold project requires at least 80 hours of work. To earn this award I completed two Senior Level Journeys, which you can see on the Disabilities Awareness page.  I submitted a proposal with a plan that showed the project would have an impact Nationally and/or Globally, the project goals would be measured to show the project was successful, and the project would be sustainable.  

I know the project will impact people all over the world because I know there are people with disabilities all over the world.  For example, I went back to China and visited the orphanage and foster home where I used to live. I showed them photos in a presentation about my disability and how I go to school, play sports, and have many friends. The next time I visited China, the orphanage director told me they were inviting children from a nearby school to the orphanage to play with the children who were disabled in the orphanage.

The goal is that this project will be sustainable because it is on a website that everyone across the world can access.  The website will continue to be used by several community organizations. The project goals will be measured by the answers on the short survey I hope you will fill out before you leave the website. Just click on the Disability Awareness Activities Survey button on the top of each webpage.  There is also a Survey Button on the bottom of some of the website pages as a reminder.  (You should only fill out the Survey once, not one for each activity.)

You might wonder what my plans are now that I am at the end of my Girl Scout Journey.  My Girl Scout leader has asked me if I would want to volunteer for her troop, so I plan on getting a Lifetime Girl Scout Membership so that I can help girls as an Adult Girl Scout just like everyone has helped me.