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Silver Award: Project Silver Babysitting
Girl Scout Cadettes Emily, Elanor, and Magdalena from Troop 29 in Chesapeake took action to help ForKids, a local nonprofit, through their Girl Scout Silver Award project.
When they learned that the Chesapeake facility needed volunteer babysitters, they brainstormed ways to connect volunteers to the nonprofit.
“Although they are good at getting volunteers, the word about needing babysitters wasn’t getting out,” Elanor said.
ForKids offers a comprehensive approach to families in need of housing or housing assistance, serving several cities in the Hampton Roads area. They are designed to promote self-sufficiency and reduce the likelihood of recurrent homelessness. That includes offering counseling and resources to residents such as after-school programing, but on-site childcare is limited. Without safe, reliable care for their children, mothers residing in shelters face a massive barrier to attending the classes, job training, and counseling sessions required to rebuild their lives. In addition, children in shelters have experienced instability; having care on-site provides them with a stable routine and emotional support while their mothers learn.
The three girls from Troop 29 took several steps to support a babysitting program at ForKids that included holding a collection drive to make “Kid Kits” filled with equipment and supplies to entertain the children being babysat. They also created a babysitting training class to help teenage volunteers, like themselves, get the training they needed to be prepared to babysit children in these special circumstances.
To promote opportunities to volunteer as a babysitter at ForKids, they identified and reached out to specific groups in the area; promotion materials they created for this outreach included posters, flyers, and emails, and a video to use during presentations.
“One of the organizations we contacted was the Kiwanis Club,” Emily said. “We talked to them in person and now we have a couple of volunteers from the club!”
Last year, according to the ForKids website, 1,100 people volunteered with the nonprofit. Girl Scouts Emily, Elanor and Magdalena are hoping that some of those volunteers are helping with babysitting and are taking advantage of their Kid Kits!
Congratulations, Girl Scouts!
