Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) announced that Evelyn P., a high school senior at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, has earned Girl Scouting’s highest honor, the Gold Award. Evelyn’s Gold Award project, titled The Heartshare Project, produced a free week-long art summer camp at the Santa Ana Mix Academy to address the lack of art education. Evelyn created her own curriculum and taught the campers about diverse artists, different medium practices like sculpting, painting and drawing, and completed the experience with a group mural that will remain on their school wall. The summer camp hosted 107 students.

Evelyn said, “All of my life I have been an ‘art kid.’ I fell in love with creating during my first beginners drawing class and saw its importance. However, art education is barely considered in schools. I believe that exposing youth to art is more important than ever as art emphasizes the importance of creative thinking. By teaching children how to embrace their own creativity from a young age, we are setting up more innovative thinkers who will ultimately change the world.”

On June 4, GSGLA honored the largest Gold Award class in the nation for the 12^th year in a row at a ceremony at the Pasadena Civic Center; a total of 212 local Girl Scouts contributed over 20,000 hours implementing sustainable change in their communities. Projects focused on reducing carbon footprints, introducing underrepresented groups to technology, raising fentanyl awareness among teens, and managing mental and physical health, to name a few.

Girl Scouts in grades 10 – 12 can earn the Gold Award – the highest award in Girl Scouting – by developing and carrying out lasting solutions to issues in their neighborhoods and beyond. The Gold Award is a national standard that acknowledges a Girl Scout’s accomplishments, leadership, commitment, creativity and personal effort to make the world a better place. Each Gold Award is a significant achievement in a Girl Scout’s life and an extension and compilation of all she has learned through her Girl Scout

experience. Outside of regular schoolwork and extracurricular activities, Girl Scouts spend 80-plus hours solving a problem in their community they are passionate about.

To learn more about the Girl Scout Gold Award, visit girlscoutsla.org/goldaward.