North shore teen earns highest honor for Girl Scout

Sarah Mathews, a recent Fontainebleau High School graduate, has earned the highest award in Girl Scouting.

The Girl Scout Gold Award acknowledges a young woman's accomplishments in four major areas. She has demonstrated leadership, community service, career planning and personal development.

One of the major areas in the quest for the Gold Award is a community project. The candidate must create a sustainable and ongoing community Service Project.

Mathews elected to create a project that she named "Peace, Love and Wildflowers." According to Rue McNeil, Executive Director at the Northlake Nature Center, the Scout completely gutted and reseeded the area at the Center that she selected for her wildflower garden. She did research on the seeds that she would plant, made sure that the flowers would be identified and even created a path through the area so visitors could walk among the plants and flowers for closer inspection. The garden is planned so that it is perennially blooming.

McNeil sings high praises for the project and feels it will afford pleasure to guests at the center for many years to come.

Mathews has been an avid camper and selected this project as a continuation of ecological education.

"I feel this is an important issue and that we must preserve nature as much as possible for generations to come," she said.

Mathews began her Girl Scouting career in Chalmette as a kindergartner. When Hurricane Katrina forced her family out of their home and to the north shore, Scouting was the one constant that remained. Both Mathews and her mother, Karen, have been active in Scouting projects for all of those years. Mathews has traveled extensively with her Scout troops and feels she is fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Girl Scouts from all over the U.S. She said the bonds formed with girls from so many different areas is one of the things that make Scouting so meaningful....