You can help Girl Scouts Dream Big and Do Good!
110 years ago, Juliette Gordon Low, nicknamed Daisy, imagined a movement where all girls could come together and embrace their unique strengths and passions, and founded Girl Scouts. Since then, millions of Girl Scouts have developed into strong and courageous girls who change the world.
Whether exploring their interests, building new skills, or growing in confidence, Girl Scouts have opportunities to become the leaders of tomorrow—that is still our mission today
Dream Big
A high school senior from San Jose, Annmaria earned her Gold Award by developing Scout Blood (scoutblood.com). During her sophomore year, she learned about a plane crash in India that killed 21 passengers and injured 100 more. The families impacted were personally requesting blood donations via chat messages. She discovered that developing areas, like Kerala, where her family is from, often do not have access to infrastructure that can support holding so much blood at once, so patients are often burdened with the responsibility of finding their own blood donors. Annamaria said: “immediately disheartened after hearing about the heartbreaking situations of so many families, I decided that I would work to bring a solution to this crisis.” She eagerly started planning the architecture for Scout Blood—a platform that allows hospitals to send emergency text messages to local registered blood donors.
While Annmaria is making an impact in Kerala, she is also building the courage, confidence, and character she will need to succeed. She notes, “programming the software from scratch took months of debugging, testing, and starting over. Yet, despite the hours of frustration that often accompanied my work, I loved doing it more than anything. Nothing could ever compare to how I felt when I realized my code finally worked.”
“It inspired me to materialize my talents and abilities into a project that actually had an impact on a community. It forced me to think outside the box because I identified an issue that, unfortunately, largely goes unnoticed.”
Do Good
Because of Annmaria’s personal connection to her project and desire
to positively change the world, Scout Blood is being used by
twenty-four hospitals in Kerala and has over 11,000 registered blood
donors. The program has recently been adopted by the Red Cross, which
has expanded Scout Blood across India. Recently, Annmaria was invited
to the United Nations (UN), in New York City to speak about her Gold
Award project for the International Day of the Girl symposium. Talk
about doing good in the community! Juliette Gordon Low would be proud
of Annmaria and all the Girl Scouts who, over the past 110 years, have
developed confidence in themselves, their dreams, and their
skills—making the world a better place!
With your partnership, more girls will have the opportunities and
experiences to help them develop into problem solvers, go-getters,
dreamers, and doers who create a better future for us all. Invest in
our future and help keep Daisy’s spirit alive, for Annmaria and all
Girl Scouts in the years to come.
