by Diane Lowrey
R-T Editor
When 60 Senior Girl Scouts from the Girl Scouts of Kansas/Missouri area receive their Senior Gold Award on Saturday in St. Joseph, three of the recipients will be from Trenton.
Latorrie Johnson, Elle Neal and Werthen Gass have been working for over a year to earn the award, which is the highest honor a Girl Scout can achieve. The award, similar to the Boy Scout Eagle Award, goes to very few members and for three scouts from one troop to receive the honor is quite an accomplishment. The girls are members of Trenton Girl Scout Troop 8081.
To earn the award, each girl was required to “give back to their communities” by coming up with a project that would be on-going once it was established. For Latorrie, the project involved recycling barrels for events held at the North Central Missouri Fairgrounds, while Elle spent her time scanning Trenton High School yearbooks onto the Trenton R-9 District website. Werthen established a reading program that can be accessed through YouTube, recording the reading of several books for both children and adults.
Each project had to be approved by a committee of scouting officials before it could be implemented. Once they were given the go-ahead, the girls selected a mentor to help guide them and provide expertise as the girls moved forward.
At least 80 hours of work was required, but all three girls said much more time was put into the projects in order to meet their goal. In fact, all three girls have indicated they plan to continue working with their projects even after receiving the award.
Latorrie Johnson
Latorrie said she saw a lot of items that could be recycled being thrown away at community events and came up with a project in which recycling barrels would be available at the various activities held at the North Central Missouri Fairgrounds. She was able to receive a donation of barrels from ConAgra Foods, which she then spray-painted and placed recycling symbols on the barrels to designate their use. The first use was at the NCM Fair this past summer, where she not only made sure the barrels were out every day, it was also her responsibility to empty them and bag the items to be taken to a recycling facility. The barrels are being stored at the fairgrounds and will be available for other events being held there this year, including the Gooseberry Festival and the Missouri Day Festival.
But that was only a small part of the project. Latorrie also developed a recycling information program and worked with children at the elementary school level. She also developed recycling flyers for distribution at the Grundy County Health Department Health Fair.
Elle Neal
A conversation with a friend from Joplin about the loss of school records during the Joplin tornado in 2011 led to the development of Elle’s project, which involved scanning two decades worth of THS yearbooks onto the district website. After gaining permission from the Trenton High School Alumni Association and the R-9 Board of Education to proceed, she worked with THS/TMS media center coordinator E’Lisha Gass and R-9 technology coordinator Taya Ray to get the project under way. Elle said the project was not without its difficulties, noting that “technology is not always your friend.” She said there were also some yearbooks that could not be located to be scanned or that the quality “was not good enough” to copy onto the website. However, the program has been established so that all future yearbooks can be saved and easily viewed by the public via the school’s website.
Werthen Gass
“Nom Nom Read Read” is a YouTube channel established by Werthen with the goal of providing a resource for persons to become better readers. While it started as a children’s literacy project through FCCLA, Werthen expanded its use through her participation in Key Club as well as using it as her Gold Star Award project. It involves scanning books and uploading them through a computer app called “Explain Everything,” which also allows individuals to do a “voice over” of the story. By downloading “Nom Nom Read Read” through YouTube, persons can not only get the book and read it, they can also be reading the book while it is being read to them. Her mentor, Taya Ray, helped her with the technical aspects of the project, which has over 100 books now on the “Nom Nom” site. In addition to doing some of the reading herself, “guest readers” such as members of the Trenton Key Club and FCCLA advisor Suzi Beck have lent their voices as guest readers.
All three girls, who are juniors at Trenton High School, have been involved in the Girl Scout program since grade school and have been “troop-mates,” with their mothers having served as a leader sometime during their scouting career. Latorrie is the daughter of Derlin and Mary Ellen Johnson; Elle is the daughter of Vince and Dr. NiCole Neal; and Werthen is the daughter of Bob and E’Lisha Gass.