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Queen Creek Girl Scout Alexa Howell earns prestigious Gold Award

Posted 4/9/20

After taking an American Sign Language course as a sophomore at Queen Creek High School, Alexa Howell, a Girl Scout with the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, developed a passion for finding ways to help …

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Queen Creek Girl Scout Alexa Howell earns prestigious Gold Award

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After taking an American Sign Language course as a sophomore at Queen Creek High School, Alexa Howell, a Girl Scout with the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, developed a passion for finding ways to help others.

“The class really opened my eyes to the fact that there are people who are different than me struggling with a lack of accessibility in activities at school,” Alexa said in a release. “I wanted to do something to help people who have disabilities, and that inspired me to work toward my Gold Award.”

The Gold Award is the highest honor available to Girl Scouts in ninth through 12th grade, requiring a minimum of 80 hours of work on a project that creates a sustainable solution to a problem girls identify in their communities.

“Recipients of Girl Scouts’ highest award are part of an elite group of Girl Scouts who have distinguished themselves as prominent leaders in their communities and as true change-makers,” Tamara Woodbury, CEO for the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, said in the release.

Gold Award Girl Scouts are proven to go on to become empowered female leaders with 60% of Girl Scout alum currently involved in volunteer work or community service, compared to 31% of non-alum, the release states.

“When a girl becomes a Gold Award Girl Scout, she is proving to the world the remarkable dedication she has shown to improve her community,” Ms. Woodbury said. “Earning the Gold Award allows girls to impactfully showcase their leadership to future employers, take advantage of unique college scholarship opportunities and even enlist in the military at a higher pay grade.”

For Alexa, her inspiration for where to begin working toward her Gold Award came after learning about Val Vista Lakes Elementary from a family friend. She was introduced to the school’s Gardening Club advisor, Debbie Dirvonas, and learned how she was looking for ways to improve their garden.

After noticing its gardening boxes were not accessible to all students, Alexa decided to rebuild the garden to include standing gardening boxes, a shed and stools.

“The gardening boxes were all on the ground, which would make it impossible for people who use wheelchairs or have back problems to use them,” says Alexa. “I was able to reimagine the garden to have more options for people needing to sit down.”

In addition to the accessible re-design, Alexa also made PVC pipe frames to cover the gardening boxes during the winter, and included elements in her designs to give interactive opportunities for students to learn about plants as they grow.

“In my designs, I included Plexiglas windows so that the students could see the root systems as the plants grow,” says Alexa. “A lot of effort and care went into designing and building the equipment: I built everything from scratch, without a kit, and used all of my original designs in the engineering process.”

In addition to rebuilding the garden, Alexa created captioned videos so that anyone could participate in gardening.

“Debbie taught me how to care for plants and I created captioned videos teaching people at home how to do it themselves,” says Alexa, noting the captions are important so people who are hard of hearing or deaf can follow along.

Thanks to Alexa’s efforts, the Gardening Club is now more accessible to any student who wants to participate in the years to come.

“We started with 12 students in Gardening Club this year, and Debbie’s fifth grade class joined in as well,” says Alexa. “Debbie is a special-education teacher, so the garden is now better equipped to meet the ranging needs of her students. All of her fifth graders from this year have also decided to stay in the Gardening Club next year.”

As Alexa finishes up her senior year at Queen Creek High School and 11 total years as a Girl Scout, she looks towards the future, and sees it filled to the brim with STEM education.

“I’m glad my Gold Award allowed me to explore my passion for engineering,” says Alexa. “Wherever I go to college, I can’t wait to study mechanical engineering and one day join Engineers Without Borders to help build a better world.”