Girls Scouts is an organization that helps many people in the community and not just by selling cookies.

They collect donations for homeless shelters, serve food at soup kitchens and lend a hand at the Open Door Mission. Their members help people in need while also being taught leaderships and critical thinking skills.

Freshmen Sabrina Delaney and Elzbieta Donohew took these ideals to heart and decided to organize their own service project.They made a decision to make a change this year by helping the less fortunate.

They created educational classes about health and nutrition for the children of the Lydia House. The girls came up with this idea in hopes of getting The Silver Award, one of the highest awards received in Girl Scouts.

“I chose to do this project because I love helping children so we decided to make a class to educate them,” Donohew said. “My troop leader helped us get in contact with the people at the Lydia House who were really excited about working with us.”

The girls had four sessions where they taught the kids and some of their parents about each food group, fruits, vegetables, dairy grains and protein. The students organized differents snacks, physical activities and games about each group. They made recipes like fruit kabobs, yogurt parfaits and English muffin pizzas. One game they played was rolling a huge dice and having the children do an exercise afterward.

“Each day we did games that corresponded to every food group,” Delaney said. “We also taught the kids about the health benefits in the foods that we had made. We also gave out stickers and prizes throughout the games.”

Many of the parents at the Lydia House got involved along with their children in the classes.

“The parents of the kids reacted positively to the classes,” Delaney said. “We had extra food and gave it to the parents who strongly appreciated it, some parents even stayed and participated with the kids.”

After the project the girls applied for The Silver Award and other volunteer awards. Delaney also received the President’s Volunteer Service Award presented by the Prudential Spirit of Community Program.

“When Dr. Tiemann brought the award into my class I was excited,” Delaney said. “ I wasn’t really expecting it so it was really cool.”

This project not only impacted the participants but both of the girls.

“It made me feel good knowing I was helping a lot of people at the Lydia House,” Donohew said. “We also had lots of fun interacted with them so it was a really good experience.”

The girls learned many different life skills throughout the process of doing the project. How to communicate with others, organizational skills and to always lend a hand to people in need.