Community

COMMUNITY GOGOLD4VETS: TEEN TRIBUTE TO VALOR

By Jennifer Marshall

When Girl Scout and Cactus Shadows High School graduate Tanner Laizure learned that female veterans and their families needed help, she answered their call without delay.

Serving others is nothing new to 18-year-old Laizure who’s been a Girl Scout for the past 12 years as an

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active member of the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council. Along with graduating from high school this year, she also just received her lifetime Girl Scout membership, which means she can serve as an adult volunteer and troop leader. But before she put her ‘Girl’ years behind her, this teen had one final goal she wanted to achieve, and it was an ambitious one.

“The Gold Award Project,” said Laizure, “which is bigger than any other Girl Scout service project, can be completed only once during the high school years. When I started Girl Scouts, it was always my goal to earn the Gold Award.”

According to Laizure, earning the Gold Award is noncompulsory, and because there are several steps, each with specific guidelines, many girls elect not to pursue this award.

“The Gold Award has a lot of requirements,” said Laizure. “For example, the project has to be educational. In order to serve a wider community, it must also be something outside of the Girl Scout realm, and lastly, it has to be sustainable.”

Laizure and other girls who meet the challenge and Go Gold reap many benefits for their effort. Colleges respect the Gold Award and may offer scholarships based on having it. The US Military also recognizes the value of the Gold Award, and for Laizure, who’s enlisted in the US Navy, her rank will jump from an E-1 to an E-3.

“The main objective of my Gold Award Project—Teen Tribute to Valor—was to address the issue of outreach for mostly female veterans,” said Laizure. “Through this project, I wanted to share with the public the challenges they go through.” Now that she’s enlisted, Laizure shares a real empathy towards other women in the military and their face is affordable housing ing. While nonveterans can apply to live at Valor on Eighth, preference is always given to female military veterans from any branch of service and their families.

Judging from the fact that within a month of its January opening this year all of the 50 units were filled and a waiting list immediately created, there’s definitely a need for this type of housing.

“When it comes to low income housing,” said Laizure, “there’s not much out there that accepts single mom veterans with kids; a lot of it favors men.”

Valor on Eighth was a team effort between the City of Tempe, Maricopa County and several nonprofit organizations including Save the Family. Through a Girl Scout connection who worked for Save the Family, Laizure learned that the building’s teen room and recreational space both needed to be outfitted with fun amenities for the residents to enjoy.

Except for a TV and a little furniture, the teen room was a blank canvas. The apartment manager, an army veteran, gave Laizure total design freedom over the

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FOR SALE Newly remodeled 3 br, 2 ba w/family room after discharge, and that’s where Valor on Eighth and Laizure teamed up to help & fi replace. Roof & A/C these women and their replaced. Kitchen, baths & families. fl ooring replaced. It shows like new. Corner lot w/RV Valor on Eighth, a 50 unit apartment complex located parking. 1638 sf. in Tempe near ASU, is 19455 N. 36th St. $345,000 VALLEY HOMES & LAND Brian Carola Owner/Broker unlike any other apartment in Phoenix. The residential unit was designed and built to offer low income

MLS 5767965 602-923-2600 female veterans and their families affordable hous-

“I put together a library with a reading nook,” said Laizure. “Through donations from around the Valley, I received games, small decor items, a thousand plus books and 400 DVDs and movies all over a threemonth span of time.”

One of her mother’s colleagues donated a pool table, and that was the beginning of the design for the 5th floor recreational space. This area is still a work in progress, and Laizure hopes to round out the fun by soon adding foosball and air hockey.

“Right now, female veterans are the largest growing homeless population in the veteran community,” said Laizure, “and these women need to be cared for because they served their country just as hard as men.”

Learn more about Valor on Eighth at their website: www.valoroneighth.com.