Girl Scout Silver Award Kindness Rock Garden
Over the past two years New Providence Girl Scouts Mayuri Rajakaruna, Sriya Tallapragada, and Lauren Venturella have worked together to accomplish a Silver Award project. To earn the award scouts must identify and implement a sustainable project that helps the community.
These scouts recognized the challenges of mental health in children. They saw young children having difficulty coping with stress, finding it hard to boost their self-esteem and think positively about themselves, and lastly struggling to achieve their daily tasks and goals.
The three girl scouts came up with a new impactful idea that consisted of three separate activities. They created a mental health workshop series for children in New Providence and surrounding towns. They built a Kindness Rock Garden at the New Providence Memorial Library. Lastly, they developed a spirit week called “NPMS Fidget Week” at New Providence Middle School to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month and bring attention to the matter.
The girls dedicated Saturdays during the month of May to have their workshops. Each girl had chosen their topic and found a local therapist/counselor and researched their topic and created a whole workshop including crafts, a short presentation, and fun activities.
Mayuri’s workshop was based around the topic of “Self Esteem”. She noticed that a lot of children younger than her always focused on their negative qualities instead of focusing on their amazing traits. She took this topic and created a fun monster-themed self-esteem workshop, partnering with Rebecca Coniglio, and taught through fun monster characters how self-esteem can be implemented into our everyday life. She used an easy homemade craft and made self-esteem jars with her audience which consisted of children writing anything they liked about themselves on small squares of paper and placing them in their jar. Then, moving on they would fill up their jar whenever they found something new that they liked, and whenever their self-esteem was down they could simply pick a paper or two from their jar and remind themselves of their positive qualities.
In a virtual world, it can be really hard for young kids to stay focused and set goals. Sriya herself noticed that distractions like social media and the internet have been especially difficult during online school. Young children sometimes have difficulty focusing without any external help. To fix that, she partnered with a local therapist, Lindsay Robertson from Summit, NJ, who helped her realize the power of a growth mindset. Together, using fun DIY activities and worksheets, their workshop discussed how to prioritize, how the brain works, using persistence as a superpower, and most importantly, helping participants learn to respect and value their amazing brain. The children who attended the lesson came out with a renewed belief in themselves and their wonderful brains. They learned how to follow the steps needed to develop a growth mindset and prioritize what is important to them. The simple lessons that they learned is something that they were able to carry into all aspects of their life, from school work to social situations.
Lauren’s workshop focused on dealing with stress and problem solving. She worked with Dr. Carrie Spindel Bashoff to create her lesson. Dr. Spindel Bashoff is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in helping people with anxiety. Her practice is in Livingston, New Jersey. Together, they made a concise lesson of important coping skills that children can incorporate into their everyday lives. They learned how to follow the STEPS model to solve their own problems, how to know if they are stressed out, and ways to combat those feelings.
The children came out of the lesson understanding that they should always reach out for help from trusted adults and loved ones in their lives. Simple tactics like these will make a vital difference in someone’s life if taught at a young age. Familiar faces that attended the following workshops let Lauren know that they shared the methods of coping with their families at home and have made them a habit in their day to day lives.
Throughout these workshops, the girls received many compliments from adults who attended with their children. Jennifer Casanova, a parent stated, “You all did a wonderful job on this series and should be so very proud of yourselves. The time and effort you put into this silver award is inspiring! Thank you for giving back to our community and realizing that this is what we need at this time.”
The biggest event throughout the whole month of May was the Kindness Rock Garden grand opening. Over 50 participants came and painted rocks to fill the new rock garden on the front lawn of the New Providence Memorial Library.
Each participant was given a kit which included a rock, paintbrush, set of paints, and a marker. The participants came with their friends and family and listened to music and painted with one another. This was an amazing event that brought families and friends together to spread kindness and see one another again as the pandemic started to settle more.
The New Providence Middle School Fidget Week was based around mental health. Fidget Toys are for all ages that people are meant to play with to calm themselves and reduce their stress and anxiety.
Students were asked to volunteer in making kits filled with craft supplies so students throughout the school could make fidget kits. They consisted of stress balls, glitter jars, and popsicle bead fidgets. Students were given an additional pamphlet about mental health, explaining the importance one’s mental health. This pamphlet was created by the three girl scouts.
Overall, the three girls had done an amazing job in creating this project. Throughout the pandemic, it was inspiring how they accomplished such a high award in Girl Scouts but also helped their community during a time of need.
Visit the Kindness Rock Garden at the New Providence Memorial Library and check their website page to view their projects and download resources: https://sites.google.com/view/mental-health-silver-award/home.
Photo by New Providence Girl Scouts
