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Silver Award Spotlight: Buddy Bench Recycling Project
Among the many things Girl Scouting promotes, respecting oneself and others — being a friend — are key and planted firmly in the Girl Scout Law. Girl Scout Cadette Gidget S. loves that about Girl Scouting and thinks the world would be a much nicer and kinder place if everyone practiced the Girl Scout Law!
This Girl Scout, who attends Norfolk Academy, has been a Girl Scout since she was a Daisy and has already earned her Bronze Award, had friendship in mind when she approached the Beach Manor Preschool to see if there were any special projects they needed help with that she could support as a Girl Scout Silver Award project. She found that like her, they wanted to make the world a bit friendlier and kinder. For them, creating a Buddy Bench would start that practice with the lives they touched at their school.
“A Buddy Bench is a non-verbal way for children to express needing a friend,” Gidget said when describing her project. “By sitting on the bench, it shows other kids that they need a friend to play with. Having something like this around for kids to use is really important. If kids don’t have anyone to play with they feel left out. This can cause them to be angry, sad, and shy.”
Gidget had a goal of bringing a Buddy Bench to this school and then creating a way to encourage the teachers to teach students about the purpose of the bench. To help pay for the bench she wanted to donate, she worked with the NexTrex Program. NexTrex is a company that sets up challenges to help reduce plastic pollution. The challenge is to collect 1,000 pounds of plastic film items in a year’s period and drop them off at a designated collection site. The bags are used to create a resin bench which requires little to no maintenance. Gidget worked with the school to start a collection and before a year’s time was up, the students and teachers had collected more than the 1,000 pounds needed! Once the bench was secured, Gidget donated copies of “The Buddy Bench” book by Patty Brozo to the school, so teachers could read the book to students at the start of the year (and periodically throughout the year) as a reminder about the purpose of the bench.
“I felt good about this project,” Gidget said. “Hopefully, when other kids see someone sitting on the bench they will walk over and ask them to play. I think I met my goal of offering a way to for the school to be more inclusive and decrease any loneliness experienced by students. The conservation project of recycling the plastic bags and film was an additional benefit!”
Congratulations, Gidget!
