Bronze Award Spotlight: Helping Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge
Girl Scout Juniors Avery, Bess, Julia, Kendall, Madeline, and Maya of Troop 671 earned their Bronze Award for taking action to help preserve wildlife with a service project they titled, “Helping Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge.” For over 25 years, Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge, located in Suffolk, Virginia, has been providing shelter and rehabilitation services to orphaned, sick, and injured wildlife in the Hampton Roads area and they rely solely on support from the community and their donors. Girl Scouts from our council have supported Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge through service projects and donation drives in the past, and Troop 671 recently took the lead to make a difference for the organization and the wildlife they serve.
Troop leaders of Troop 671, Kacey Farrell and Stephanie Cook, helped to provide support to the Girl Scouts throughout the process, which took the troop roughly 6 months to plan and execute. Kacey said, “The girls met in February to decide on a Bronze Award project and quickly narrowed down their field of interest to helping animals. We got in touch with a rehabber from Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge and set up a tour of her property to learn about what the refuge does and what kind of help they need. The girls also met and named a newborn raccoon.”
The Girl Scouts were inspired to tackle a big project, so they decided to build a large outdoor enclosure for the baby raccoons who are fostered and rehabilitated by Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge. The troop held a large scale yard sale to fundraise and then purchased an outdoor enclosure to install at the refuge.
Kacey continued, “They assembled the entire piece with minimal help from adults—we were so proud of them—and used the remaining funds to make no sew blankets for animal bedding, as requested by Evelyn’s Wildlife Refuge, and purchased more items from the refuge's wish list. They also spent time individually doing a beach and park clean up nearby to protect wildlife. They learned to work together as a team and support each other. They learned they are capable of putting together a large scale project and figuring out the hiccups and bumps along the way, that they could run a successful fundraising event, and they learned about how to help and protect wildlife.”
