Don't Forget About the Vets' Pets

My Girl Scout Gold Award Journey

My Project

For my Gold Award, I built shelves for the Veterans Outreach Center, and then I organized a donation drive to collect pet food and toys to fill those shelves. I want to share the steps I took to complete my project and what I learned, in hopes that this will inspire others to take on a similar project.

Building the Shelf

Here is the sketch that I used to build the shelves for the Veterans Outreach Center. The biggest takeaway I had from building these shelves is to make sure that the wood you use is straight. In addition, make sure to reinforce the plywood shelves with support wood so that the shelves do not sag.

The Donation Drive

The Drive

I did two types of drives to collect pet food and toys for the Veterans Outreach Center. For the first drive, I partnered with an organization in my town that does monthly food drives, and asked if they could also collect pet food during their April food drive.

In addition, I also organized my Girl Scout Troop, as well as other Girl Scouts in the area to do a drive. For this drive, I printed out flyers (the one I created is up above) and I conducted the drive in a Scouting for Food like style, where we delivered the flyers one weekend and came back the next weekend to pick up people's donations from their porches. Be careful, because in the United States, it is illegal to put flyers in mailboxes, so we had to put them in the newspaper containers or on their door (if they did not have a newspaper slot). All around, I found that this drive was a huge success!

Get in Touch

Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions!