Boy Scouts
Junior Eli Susman helped the adults prepare a stretcher from an unzipped sleeping bag for a fellow scout member who had just been struck by lightning. First aid is one of the skills Susman developed during his journey to become an Eagle Scout.
Susman has been an Eagle Scout, the highest ranked position in the Boy Scout program, since Nov. 2011. Among the requirements to obtain an Eagle Scout ranking, Susman had to participate in a service project, and he chose to organize a free carnival for kids with special needs.
On April 24, 2012 he was awarded the Glenn A. and Melinda W. Adams National Eagle Scout Service Project of the Year Award for his carnival project.
Susman said he heard a saying “join for the honor, stay for the knives” and focused on being involved. In the process, he was awarded badges and merits.
“I never rushed through them,” said Susman. “In fact, my Eagle Advisor always brags about how I have a story behind every merit badge.”
Susman’s scout journey taught him different skills from camping to public speaking.
Another student to achieve Eagle Scout ranking is senior Jake Gianni, who has been in the Boy Scouts program for 12 years. Gianni has participated in activities such as sleeping over on a submarine and spending five months making trash can containers for Youth Services of Glenview and Northbrook.
“The hardest part was creating a working blueprint [for the trash cans],” Gianni said.
Susman said his project benefited him.
“The kind of feeling that you get from this kind of project is indescribable,” said Susman. “And the volunteers walked out of there feeling just as good as the participants.”
Gianni said that he feels it is “really good to help out an organization that does so much for the community.”
Girl Scouts
When junior Amy Lakowski tells her peers that she is a Girl Scout, the usual reaction is “‘can I have some cookies?’”
According to Lakowski, cookies are great for helping to fund the organization, but Girl Scouts do much more than sell cookies.
Lakowski is part of the Girl Scout Board of Directors of Greater Chicago and Northwest Ind.
According to Lakowski, the board consists mostly of adults, but also six representative girls who are able to share opinions from a younger point of view. This helps to ensure balanced decisions for the organization.
Lakowski was a part of a planning team for the Girls’ World Forum.
“It was a five day forum with about 500 participants from each state and 82 countries where we came and discussed three of the United Nation millennium development goals,” Lakowski said. The three goals they focused on were ensuring environmental sustainability, promoting gender equality and eliminating extreme poverty. Lakowski considers being a part of the planning team of the Forum her proudest accomplishment.
Junior Samantha Crowe has been a Girl Scout for 12 years. She is considered to be an ambassador, which is the title for the upperclassmen scouts. Crowe said that the other Girl Scouts she has met have inspired her to continue being a scout.
Crowe’s troop meets twice every month to discuss current events in the community and world.
“There is this really small group of committed people that always go week after week and year after year, and you kind of form connections with those people” she said.
Crowe and Lakowski look beyond the misconceptions of Girl Scouts as they reflect on the work they have done. Instead of a group of girls who sell cookies, make crafts and go camping, “We [The Girl Scout Organization] prefer to be looked at as an organization that promotes courage, confidence, and character,” Lakowski said.