glo Girl : Allison Jones

glo GIRL

ALLISON JONES

Age: 19

By Jennie Renner | Photo by Leaha Meinika

The mission of Girl Scouts is: “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Allison Jones lives up to this mission.

Allison was born and raised in Fort Wayne and is a lifetime member of Girl Scouts. She is also a Gold Award recipient and an International Gold Award Scholarship winner - the first in the Northern IndianaMichiana council to have ever won this distinction.

The Gold Award represents the highest achievement available to Girl Scouts. “You complete a service-based project that fills a need in your community and is self-sustaining and long-lasting,” explained Allison.

For her Gold Award project, she created a communication card for people who are deaf to use at fast food restaurants. The card has pictures with labels underneath so that people can point to them and communicate.

Allison became passionate about the deaf community when she took American Sign Language for three years at Carroll High School. During her senior year, when she wasn’t taking the class, she found herself missing it. “I really love the language and the expression and just learning about the community,” said Allison. So she talked to her sign language teacher about focusing on the deaf community for her Gold Award project, and together they came up with the idea.

Although communication cards are not a new concept, Allison designed her card to fill an unmet need. She distributed the 8 ½ x 11-inch cards locally to three organizations that serve people who are deaf. She also sent a pdf version to the organizations so that they could print out as many as they wanted to distribute.

This past spring, Allison visited her high school and spoke to the sign language classes about her Gold Award project. She left copies of her communication card with the teacher to distribute to students who work in fast food.

“That was really exciting to see that the project could be expanded and given to student workers who can talk to their co-workers who don’t know American Sign Language,” said Allison. “I think that finishing this service project gives me courage that I know I could do something like it again in the future, even if it was in a completely different subject area.”

Allison is currently a sophomore studying creative writing at Hanover College in southern Indiana with dreams of becoming a published author someday. Until then, she plans to pursue a career in book editing. For her Gold Award project, she said she thought of choosing something related to writing or reading, since those are areas of interest for her.

“But I think that branching out and diving more into the deaf community really helped me broaden my horizons,” said Allison. “Now I know that I don’t have to just stick in one career area the rest of my life, I can do different things and be successful and be happy.”

And that is advice she would give others as well: “Your life doesn’t have to be focused in one area all the time; you can branch out.” a • Moving Forward Rehabilitation • Auguste’s Cottage Memory Care • Long-term Care • Respite Care • Hospice Care • Outpatient Therapy

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