Mountain Brook girls earn Gold Award

Three Mountain Brook residents recently earned their Gold Awards, the highest award for Girl Scouts.

Abigail Courtenay, a recent graduate of John Carroll High School, earned her Gold Award for her project, “Outdoor Classroom.” Her project focused on getting more children outdoors and interacting with nature. Courtenay was concerned about children spending more time indoors and less time outdoors, leading to a decrease in creativity, concentration, and social skills.

To tackle this issue, she created an outdoor classroom at the Mountain Brook Girl Scout House. The space is available for art and music lessons, community group meetings, elementary school classes and more.

“There is a limited scope of activities available inside a confined, traditional classroom,” Courtenay said. “People react positively to an outdoor space that gives them the opportunity for multi-sensory learning, physical activity and the ability to connect with nature.”

Mountain Brook High School graduate Holly Brown earned her Gold Award for her project, “Picnic for the Kids.”

Her project aided The Bell Center for Early Intervention Programs, a Birmingham organization that helps children with developmental delays such as autism and Down syndrome. Brown has volunteered with the Bell Center for years and saw the need for an outdoor space for children to have therapy sessions in nature.

Brown created a safe, child-friendly outdoor space by building a picnic table and a sensory garden. The children at The Bell Center were able to be involved in the project by adding their handprints to the table and learning about the three plants (lavender, rosemary and lamb’s ear) in the sensory garden. Brown believes that allowing for an outdoor space for developmentally delayed youth provides a tactile alternative opportunity for therapy and the ability to reach their full potential.

“Growing up, I really valued my relationship with the outdoors and felt that every kid should have the same ability despite their differences,” Brown said. “I believe my project will inspire other developmental delay centers to put an emphasis on spending time outdoors.”

Rachel Estreicher, another MBHS graduate, earned her Gold Award for her project, “Reachable Resources for Non-Reading Students.”

For her project, Estreicher partnered with Start the Adventure in Reading (STAIR), a nonprofit with 13 sites in Birmingham that works to improve the reading skills of second graders who are reading below grade level. She has volunteered there for five years and saw a need to create an accompanying program that allows students to partake in the tutoring services, but with a more focused set of guidelines that allows them to catch up to where other children are when they enter the STAIR program.

After research, she developed a prototype kit, tried it out in her own tutoring and expanded and improved it. The kit includes flash cards and Lego blocks to help students understand reading and new ways of learning letters, the sounds they make and how to use those sounds to produce words.

“I took action in my community because I saw a need and I wanted to help fix that need and make it better any way that I could,” Estreicher said.

Submitted by Girl Scouts of North-Central Alabama