Two local Girl Scouts from Troop 10274 and the leaders who guided them were celebrated at an awards ceremony at the Red Hook Firehouse on April 28.
Both girls, Allison Diaz and Tamara Wambach, from Troop 10274, earned their Gold Award, the highest achievement of Girl Scouts.
Cindy Fildes, the Gold Award mentor, detailed the many steps the girls had to complete in order to earn this award, including putting in more than 65 hands-on hours in completing the required projects.
Allison, a Red Hook high school senior, collected school supplies for underprivileged children. She chose the project because, when she had been in middle school, she realized many of the kids didn’t have the means to get the required school supplies. So she started her collection, relentlessly pursuing donations from family, friends and Girl Scout troops. She even sat outside the Stop and Shop to collect donations. She then took the donations to Community Action and schools, and even sent some supplies to victims of Hurricane Irene. Still, she was not satisfied with this as a one-time project. So she took it a step further and built a permanent collection box that is now housed at Red Hook High School.
Tamara, also a Red Hook high school senior, chose one specific recipient for the focus of her energy. She wanted to give back to someone who had spent many years giving to others. She chose Beverly Kipp who, in recent years, found herself unable to maintain her own home following surgeries, recoveries, and set-backs. With her health failing her, Beverly Kipps’ home was going down with it, but no one knew because she never complained. Tamara saw through that and asked Beverly to let her help. She then recruited members of St. John’s Church, Girl Scouts, family and friends, collected donations from Williams Lumber and others to purchase supplies and arranged for food from the Village Diner. It all came together with hours of scraping, priming, painting, digging, trimming, cutting and much more to give Beverly’s home and yard a fulfilling facelift.
After the award presentation, the girls were congratulated on their achievement by County Executive Marcus Molinaro, County Legislator Ben Traudt and Red Hook Town Supervisor Sue Crane.
Special recognition and honor was bestowed upon Eileen Wambach, the girls’ main leader, and co-leaders Sue Sartoris, Kathi Diaz and Esmat Ismail.
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