Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles honored Shanthi Rao, a San Marino High School alumna, has earned Girl Scouting’s highest honor, the Gold Award.
Shanthi’s Gold Award-earning “Mosaic Tile Project” addressed the issue of helping students in special education courses at her high school learn new skills and feel seen.
With this project, she aimed to teach her classmates a new skill within the arts.
Shanthi recently learned how to create mosaics and decided to share her new skill with friends, so that they could feel as proud as she did when she first learned about this art form.
With more than 90 hours of dedication, Shanthi sourced materials, worked with younger Girl Scouts to prep the pieces, developed an inclusive PowerPoint presentation tutorial, and taught students living with disabilities in her special education class how to make a mosaic.
At the end of the project, Shanthi, along with her entire class, shared their art piece with the school so it could be displayed on campus. She even included blank panels so future students could add more tiles to the mosaic.
“I want my friends to be happy [and] teach them how to make a mosaic [so that] they will feel like they belong at school,” Shanthi said. “The special ed students were so happy to see their work, and my teacher cried because she was so happy and proud.”
On June 4, GSGLA honored the largest Gold Award class in the nation for the 12th year in a row at a ceremony at the Pasadena Civic Center; a total of 212 local Girl Scouts contributed more than 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.
Gold Awards can be earned by Girl Scouts in grades 10-12 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.
Outside of regular schoolwork and extracurricular activities, Girl Scouts spend more than 80 hours solving a problem in their community they are passionate about.
Girl Scouts who achieve the Gold Award distinguish themselves from peers through their perseverance and grit, while building their resumes that set them up for college scholarships and future career opportunities.
According to recent research, Girl Scouts who earn the Gold Award 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.
• Seventy-two percent of Gold Award Girl Scouts said earning their Gold Award helped them get a scholarship.
• Once achieved, Gold Award Girl Scouts entering any of the U.S. military branches will immediately rise one rank. To learn more about the award, visit girlscoutsla.org/goldaward.
To learn more about Girl Scouts, visit girlscoutsla.org.
First published in the Aug. 3 issue of the San Marino Tribune
