Gold Award Girl Scouts

Mariana Panariello Bay Service Unit Troop 65

Yoga and Mindful Breathing with Mariana

For Mariana Panariello’s Gold Award project, she raised awareness of the issue of children struggling with stress from real-life problems. She taught children how to practice yoga and mindful breathing daily to alleviate this. She also shed light on the importance of yoga breathing patterns while teaching at local Town of Oyster Bay (TOBAY) parks during the TOBAY Recreation Program. She partnered with her yoga instructor to create brochures that contained yoga poses and information about herself and her partner. Her students were delighted to tell her stories about the yoga poses they showed their family and friends, which solidified the sustainability portion of Mariana’s project.

A recent graduate of Oyster Bay High School, Mariana is an honor roll student, the president of the Interact Club, editor of her school’s yearbook, and captain of her varsity tennis team. Mariana’s fondest memories of Girl Scouts was attending Camp Blue Bay with her troop and selling Girl Scout Cookies. While earning her Gold Award, she learned that sharing her interests with children can impact their lives and her own. Mariana will be attending the University of Richmond in the fall.

Grace Pizzardi

WARM Service Unit

Troop 1360

Local American Heroes

Grace Pizzardi realized she was not learning firsthand accounts of the American wars. She decided to go speak to veterans. She learned things that she did not learn from her teachers or textbooks. The information that Grace received plays a crucial role in preserving our nation’s history. She knew that veterans would not always be able to tell their stories. Grace wanted to teach others the importance of speaking to veterans and learning their stories. Grace learned about the many different jobs and ways these people helped out in the military, not just on the battlefield. Grace spoke with several American Legion members and women’s veteran groups. Grace sustained her project by sharing these stories with students and on her website.

As a senior in high school, Grace is involved in sports, various clubs, and is a member of the National Honor Society. Her fondest memory of being a Girl Scout is participating in Operation Cookie by loading DHL trucks with cookies that would be given to active service members overseas.

Audrey Pioreck

Massapequa

Troop 2507

Service Unit

Let’s Learn How to be Sun Safe!

To earn her Gold Award, Audrey Pioreck taught sun safety practices to elementary and high school students to bring awareness to skin cancer prevention. She created lessons for elementary school students, which taught them how to best protect themselves from the sun in order to prevent skin cancer from developing. Audrey implemented a similar lesson in her high school. Her project is sustained by annual lessons on sun safety in a school club, as well as an annual bake sale that raises money for a local skin cancer foundation. A senior at Massapequa High School, Audrey is a captain of her school’s mock trial team, and a member of the National Honor Society. Audrey also plays volleyball. Her fondest Girl Scout memory is taking a trip to Rocking Horse Ranch with her troop. While earning her Gold Award, she learned that she can achieve whatever she puts her mind to. Audrey will be attending St. John’s University in the fall, and she will be studying history.

Ella Pocock Garden City Service Unit

Troop 1322

The Eco-Art Project

For her Gold Award, Ella Pocock implemented an environmentallybased art therapy curriculum to address the issue of adolescent mental health while educating children on plastic pollution and biodiversity loss. She partnered with the Ocean Beach Youth Group on Fire Island where she conducted eco-art workshops educating children on the benefits of engaging in artistic expression to alleviate stress and anxiety, while learning innovative forms of recycling. Ella taught the children how to upcycle plastics to create crafts such as bird feeders, piggy banks, and self-watering planters. Ella’s project will be sustained through the use of her eco-art instruction manual by several youth education and summer camp programs and her online eco-art social media account.

A junior at Garden City High School, Ella is a member of the environmental club and the school’s newspaper, literary magazine, and yearbook. She also plays varsity volleyball. Her fondest Girl Scout memory is her troop’s multigenerational trip of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters to Savannah, Georgia where they visited the home of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts of the USA.