Care Kits for Cleveland
The Girl Scout Gold Award is the ultimate, most prestigious award in Girl Scouting, and is the equivalent of the rank of Eagle in Boy Scouting. This high award is hard earned over months of perseverance through a sustainable service project requiring at least 80 service hours. The Gold Award is designed to benefit and address a need within the community or the world. Care Kits for Cleveland is my Gold Award project, which I have completed with the assistance of Girl Scout Troop 40090 and First Presbyterian Church. Along the way, I have developed and embraced my civic duty, leadership, engineering and design, time management, delegation, organizational, mathematical, and communication skills.
Care Kits for Cleveland encompasses two existing missions in the community (located at First Presbyterian Church), Hygiene Bags and Comfort Bags for Kids. Hygiene Bags promote good health and provide a necessary resource which includes various travel size hygiene items for those in need within the community. Comfort Bags for Kids provide comfort to children in emergency situations. They are a game-changing resource including items designed to bring comfort and joy (such as a stuffed animal, play dough, crayons, a coloring book, a snack, a juice box, a small toy and more) to children experiencing trauma. The Care Kits mission is to help to improve the health and quality of life of people and children in need through both Hygiene and Comfort Bags.
In order to develop the project and expand community outreach, I helped design the building of organizational storage structures to support donations and supplies in a central area in which efficient bag assembly could take place. I created informational flyers and an online presence for Care Kits in order to increase awareness, share information, and aid in organizing, enlisting, and managing volunteers to facilitate the project. I increased the scope and impact of Care Kits by enlisting numerous agencies for distribution to the appropriate individuals. In fact, my target audience for Care Kits is not limited to Cleveland, Tennessee, as needs in the community are not solely proprietary to our local area. Additionally, Care Kits acknowledges these nationwide and global issues by donating Comfort and Hygiene Bags to United Way agencies as well as the American Red Cross, which regularly meets emergent needs on a local, national, and global level.
Care Kits for Cleveland is a sustainable project, as First Presbyterian Church is perpetuating this mission and ministry indefinitely as needed. The church and several other organizations have plans to continue collecting donations for and/or assembling bags for the ministry. My hope is to successfully expand the scope, impact, and frequency of donations throughout the community to those in need.
If your organization is interested in donating to or accepting Hygiene Bags or Comfort Bags, please contact us at First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland (423)-476-5584 or email at abigail@carekitsforcleveland.org.