Senior Claire Kuntz is a Girl Scout who is currently working on finishing her Gold Award project, aimed at inspiring young girls to join the STEM field just as she was inspired in elementary school.    

“This project is about inspiring the girls and giving them great leadership and teamwork skills,” Kuntz said. “I want to open the door for STEM in their life. I first joined robotics in 5th grade and it has shaped my life and future. It is such a great opportunity and I want to give other girls this opportunity.”

One of the most prominent characteristics of the Gold Award is the goal to tackle issues that are dear to the Scout and drive lasting change in their communities.

“The gold award is the highest award possible in Girl Scouts,” Kuntz explained. “It is an individual project about whatever the Girl Scout is passionate about. There is an 80 hour requirement as well as documentation for the project and going to the Girl Scout Board to approve the project.”

Kuntz is trying to achieve this through activities such as creating robots and seeing what unique ideas one can create in different situations, in which young girls have learned about and even joined robotics teams.

“To be specific, for my project, I have started two all Girl LEGO Robotics teams at the White River library (ages 7-10). I worked with the library to get the large meeting room booked for 8 days and advertised in the library and I have a couple of robotics kids helping during the meetings as well as Amy Dalton, the STEM librarian.”

As Kuntz creates and enacts her project, she hopes to not only make the project sustainable at her library branch, but other branches as well.

“The gold award helps the community because it encourages Girl Scouts to do great projects and holds them to stick with the project,” Kuntz said, ”My goal is to get the program started and I have already talked to the librarians about making it substantial. I will be doing a training on the program when the first group is done. I am hoping the program will spread to multiple library branches.”