In the course of one week, junior Lauren Anderson collected 516 signatures from students pledging to never text and drive. In order to earn her Gold Award for Girl Scouts of America, Anderson undertook a campaign to serve the surrounding community.
“For the pledge part of my project, I had a few of my friends volunteer to go around during both first and second lunch and ask people to sign the pledges. I was pretty surprised to see so many people took the pledge,” Anderson said.
The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest honor a girl scout and one of the last pieces of a girl scout career can earn. According to their official website, it gives the girl a chance “to change the world — or at least [her] corner of it.”
“The junior Girl Scout troop is really close and personal to me. Girls like Emily Young, Rachel Yang, Alexandra Strieker and I have all been a part of it for a long time,” Anderson said.
The project as a whole required 80 hours of commitment. To fill this, Anderson completed 10 hours of background research, a powerpoint presentation, a video and promotional posters around the school.
“A lot of my background research consisted of learning about the local, national and international laws concerning texting and driving. I also took time to do some research on previously existing anti-texting campaigns, like AT&T’s ‘No Texting While Driving’ commercials,” Anderson said.
Anderson used her powerpoint to educate students about the dangers of texting and driving, as well as safety precautions they should take.
“I was able to present to students who were members of Women of West (WOW), National Honors Society (NHS), cheerleaders, Girl Scouts and regular students. I also gave three separate presentations,” Anderson said.
While Anderson has no personal stories or links to the campaign, she realizes the prevalence of texting and driving as a major problem in today’s society.
“I think the whole topic is a really big deal; people need to know how dangerous it really is, and it’s also becoming illegal in a lot of major cities and probably will be all over the nation,” Anderson said.