John Scarffe, Boulder County. Ella Bynum from Jamestown and with Girl Scout Troop 7 in Boulder just received the Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouts, after she led a team in building two new greenhouses for the Jamestown Elementary School. Jamestown Elementary lost its greenhouse in the 2013 flood, so Bynum decided to rebuild the greenhouse, but it was so damaged she directed a project to build two new ones.

Bynum started as a freshman at the University of Colorado in mid-August. At the same time, she was trying to complete the Jamestown project. 

Her team completed the project about two weeks ago, and on Tuesday, September 17, she gave her final presentation to the local Girl Scout Council, and it was approved. “It took a lot of planning,” Bynum said. “You have until September after you graduate from high school to receive the Gold Award, so it was down to the wire, and I got it done.”

Susan Knott from Boulder leads Troop 7, which draws from all the high schools in the area including Boulder High, Fairview, Erie and Superior. She had been a Troop 7 scout herself when she was at Boulder High School from 1971 to 1975, and has been a scout leader since 2008. During that time, she found girls who needed a leader in the middle schools and started Cadette Troop 182 for them, and now they are feeding into Troop 7.

According to the Girl Scout website: Founder Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop on March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia. Girl Scouts of the USA was chartered by the U.S. Congress on March 16, 1950. Today, Girl Scouts has 2.5 million members, with 1.7 million girl members who work with 750,000 adult members, primarily as volunteers.

 “Girl Scouts delivers the best leadership experience for girls, setting them up for a lifetime of success. Every year, thousands of inspiring future leaders are honored with the Girl Scout Gold Award, the most prestigious award in the world for girls, and the most difficult to earn,” according to the website.

The Bronze, Silver and Gold award represent the highest honors a Girl Scout can earn, according to the website. All three awards give girls a chance to do big things while working on an issue that has captured their interest.

Starting in 1916, the best and brightest have undertaken projects to improve their communities and the world. The Golden Eaglet insignia, the highest award in Girl Scouts from 1916 to 1939, marked the beginning of a long tradition of recognizing the extraordinary efforts of extraordinary girls, according to the website. 

From 1940 to 1963, the Curved Bar Award was the highest honor in Girl Scouts. From 1963 to 1980, the highest award was called First Class, and since 1980, the Gold Award has inspired girls to find the greatness inside themselves and share their ideas and passions with their communities.

The steps in completing a project for the Gold Award begin with using your values and skills to choose a community issue that you care about. Investigate it thoroughly. Get help and build your team. Form a team to support your efforts and help you take action. 

Identify the root cause of an issue, and then create a plan to tackle it. Present your plan and gather feedback. Submit your Project Proposal to your Girl Scout council for approval. Take action by leading your team and carrying out your plan. Finally, tell your story and share your results.

Knott said the Gold Award is like an Eagle Scout Award for Boy Scouts. To win the award, Girls take action on a project, find a need in their community and address that need, and connect with something they are passionate about. The project has to have global and measurable impact. 

“Most of the girls don’t get the Gold Award because it requires time and persistence,” Knott said. In one year, she had 12 seniors graduate, and only two received the Gold Award. 

Ella Bynum, 19, moved from St. Louis, MO, to Jamestown about four years ago. She has been a Girl Scout since she was in Kindergarten, as long as you can be a Girl Scout. After she moved to Jamestown, she joined Troop 7. She has earned the Girl Scout Bronze, Silver and now, the Gold awards. 

Bynum decided on the Jamestown Elementary School greenhouse project because she has siblings who go there, and they are very involved in the community and elementary school. “I was trying to think of something to do for my project,” Bynum said. She has been interested in plants and wanted to do something for the school. She noticed the greenhouse and thought that might be something to do for a project.

“The 2013 floods hit Jamestown hard, where local residents were trapped with no road in or out of the town for days,” according to a Girl Scout news release. The school wasn’t harmed, but people were focused on rebuilding roads and homes. 

Knott said the greenhouse didn’t totally collapse. It was not swept away, but it was damaged enough they couldn’t use it. Now, years after the flood, the town has been able to rebuild, but the greenhouse was forgotten, and has since collapsed entirely due to weather and strong winds.

Bynum said she talked about it with the troop and started working on the project proposal. It went through many changes because she wanted to have the perfect idea for it. Originally, she planned to repair the greenhouse, but she discovered that it was too subject to high winds. She researched greenhouses and discovered that a cold frame greenhouse low to the ground was the most efficient, so for her project she directed the building of two of them.

“They are much lower to the ground, so they are more wind resistant, but they act the same as a greenhouse. They are mobile so the school can take them in during the winter,” Bynum said.

Because Jamestown sits at an altitude of 6,926 feet and has a significantly shorter growing season, cold frame greenhouses extend the growing season, according to the news release. They are built low to the ground and protect plants from excessive cold or heat, and are unheated structures that use solar energy to create a microclimate. Cold frame greenhouses will now be used at Jamestown Elementary because they can endure harsh weather conditions and are also wind-resistant. 

Bynum also realized that not only did the Jamestown Elementary School lose its greenhouse, it also lost its plant science curriculum, so she created a curriculum for Jamestown Elementary to use with the cold frames based on the Colorado State Standards in Science. It has separate standards and curriculums for each grade level. The staff at Jamestown Elementary signed a commitment letter explaining how they will continue to use the cold frames and the curriculum for years to come, according to the release.

Bynum said it was a difficult process for her specifically because she had a lot going on this summer. She waited to get approval until she already had her plans rolling, but a month ago she had a meeting with Girl Scout Council members, and after showing the council all the things she had been working on, the Council gave her approval to continue working on it. 

To complete the project, Bynum assembled volunteers, community members, school students and Troop 7 members. “My family was very supportive,” Bynum said. The team completed the project in early September for Bynum’s final presentation to the Council on September 17, 2019. 

This September marks the sixth anniversary of the flood of 2013, and Jamestown is still rebuilding. “The principal and staff are so darned excited. They appreciate Ella’s greenhouses and her science curriculum, but most of all, they love her for reviving community spirit at Jamestown Elementary,” Knott said. 

For more information about Girl Scouts of Colorado, go to https://www.girlscoutsofcolorado.org. For more information about Troop 7, go to girlscouttroop70007@gmail.com. For more information on the Girl Scouts, go to https://www.girlscouts.org/.

(Originally published in the September 26, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)