2024 Gold Award Scholarship Recipient Sippi Aaij
2024 Gold Award Scholarship Recipient Sippi Aaij
Elisabeth Aaij of Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama earns statewide and national attention for her native pollinator garden project.
July 22, 2024
MONTGOMERY, Ala. Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama (GSSA) proudly recognizes one special member of the 2024 Girl Scout Gold Award class. Elisabeth Aaij from GSSA was a recipient of a $5,000 scholarship for her “Bee Better” project with a focus on monarch butterflies migrating from Mexico. For Elisabeth’s project, she built a native pollinator garden at her school, began a club to maintain the garden, and hosted a speaker event - with a native pollinator expert - to educate children of the importance of native pollinators to both our community and the world. Her project proves that Girl Scouts of courage, confidence, and character genuinely make the world a better place by demonstrating a long-lasting impact and advocating global and national issues.
Nationally, Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) is recognizing nearly 3,000 members of the 2024 Gold Award Girl Scout class who identified issues in their communities, took action, and found or created solutions to earn their Gold Awards. This year’s class of world-changers raised over $1.6 million in funding and invested over 287,000 hours to address real-life problems such as environmental sustainability, racial justice, mental and physical wellness, and gender inequality in STEM.
This year Girl Scouts of the USA awarded 111 Gold Award Girl Scouts from across our Movement a $5,000 scholarship, made possible by the Kappa Delta Foundation and many generous individual donors.
GSSA Awards Manager, Katelyn Nelson-Hickman, says, “We are so proud of Elisabeth for increasing her community’s biodiversity and educating others on native pollinators through her Gold Award project, “Bee Better”. Elisabeth’s project will positively impact her community for generations to come and serve as a powerful example of Girl Scouting in action.”
Through their Gold Award projects, the 2024 Gold Award Girl Scout class developed confidence as well as project management, organization, research, time management, problem-solving, public speaking, decision-making, and presentation skills that will help them succeed 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.
To view the list of the nearly 3,000 outstanding 2024 Gold Award projects, visit www.girlscouts.org/goldawardclass.
