SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Perryville Gold Award Girl Scout Megan Buchheit has earned a national scholarship for creating lasting change for Connection Building.
Locally, Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland is proud to recognize the seven members of the 2022 Girl Scout Gold Award class who made a sustainable impact, addressing causes they care about in our Missouri Heartland communities.
Nationally, Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) is recognizing the 3,500 members of the 2022 Gold Award Girl Scout class who identified the root cause of pressing issues in their communities, created sustainable solutions, and took action to earn the Gold Award: Girl Scouts’ highest achievement. This year’s class of world-changers invested over 300,000 hours in addressing real-life problems such as environmental sustainability, racial justice, mental and emotional wellness, and gender inequality in STEM.
The 2022 Gold Award Girl Scouts demonstrate the breadth of issues American teens feel are most prevalent in society today.
This year, Gold Award Girl Scout Megan Buchheit from Perryville, Missouri was a recipient of a national scholarship. Megan did her Gold Award project on connection building at her local middle school.
Megan had this to say about her project, “The issue I chose is the mental and emotional well-being of students in middle school. I chose this because I believe that the pressure of being on social media and in school can be very overbearing because I have had some personal experience with this.”
She explained that students/kids of that age always have constant access to each other and are able see what others are doing and that can cause many issues. She said, “Everyone can always use help and friends. I learned that I love to help people learn how to be self-sustaining, and that I love teaching people things and having a powerful voice.”
Megan earned a Girl Scouts of the USA Gold Award Scholarship for her project and will be putting the money towards attending college this upcoming school year.
GSUSA’s 111 councils were each provided the opportunity to nominate one of their outstanding Gold Award Girl Scouts to receive a national scholarship for over $2,000 each. The GSUSA Gold Award Scholarship recipients represent $225,000 invested, made possible by Insight Global, The Coca-Cola Foundation, and Kappa Delta Foundation.
Gold Award Girl Scouts become innovative problem-solvers, empathetic leaders, confident public speakers, and focused project managers. They learn resourcefulness, tenacity, and decision-making skills, giving them an edge personally and professionally. As they take action to transform their communities, Gold Award Girl Scouts gain tangible skills and prove they’re the leaders our world needs. According to recent research, Gold Award Girl Scouts are more likely to fill leadership roles at work and in their personal lives and are more civically engaged than their non-Girl Scout peers. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Gold Award Girl Scouts agree that earning their Gold Award gave them skills that help them succeed professionally. Seventy-two percent (72%) said earning their Gold Award helped them get a scholarship. Changing the world doesn’t end when a Girl Scout earns her Gold Award. Ninety-nine percent (99%) of Gold Award Girl Scout alums take on leadership roles in their everyday lives. To view the list of the 3,500 outstanding 2022 Gold Award projects, visit girlscouts.org/goldawardclass.
Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland is proud to honor our seven Girl Scout Gold Award 2022 Winners— Ashley Wilkerson, Mariel Bisher, Grace Wagner, Emma Scudder, Lydia Hodgkiss, Kira Hagan, and Megan Buchheit.