A visit to Uganda last summer led to Sandy Hook resident Grace Anne Herrick earning her Girl Scout Gold Award and attending the Girl Scouts Capitol Hill Gold Award Centennial Celebration in Washington, DC, on June 14. It also led to new educational opportunities for young students in Uganda.

Grace is a rising senior at The Gunnery, a college preparatory school in Washington, Conn. She visited Uganda during the summer of 2015 with Western Connecticut Health Network's (WCHN) Global Health Program through Danbury Hospital, she said. Dr Charles Herrick, who is the chair of psychiatry at Danbury Hospital, and Ana Christina Herrick, Grace's father and mother, also traveled to Uganda.

WCHN Global Health Program Director Majid Sadigh, medical students from the University of Vermont and others went on the trip, as well, said Grace.

While in Uganda, Grace visited hospitals and orphanages performing community outreach projects.

"But the most impactful part of the trip was when I went to the Nakaseke district, which is one of the [most] rural and poorest villages there. And in the Nakaseke district they have a place called ACCESS, which is the African Communities Center for Social Sustainability," Grace said.

There she met ACCESS Founder and Executive Director Robert Kalyesubula. They talked about Uganda and the issues in the area.

"The most pressing ones that kept coming up were access to quality health care and education," said Grace.

Grace learned that attending preschool is uncommon in Uganda, and there are many barriers to attending kindergarten, like a requirement to wear footwear or a uniform. Students who attend school without food are also sent back home, she said.

She had been traveling in the hopes of finding inspiration for a science fair project, but she decided to work on her Girl Scout Gold Award to promote solving the issues she learned about.

"When I was learning all these things, I got really upset," Grace remembered. "I went back home, and I did more research. I found the primary school dropout rate is 71 percent in Uganda."

Mrs Herrick said they witnessed how the school dropout rate also affects the unemployment rate.

When she returned home, Grace continued researching education in Uganda and learned the concept of reading to a child is uncommon, so when attending school for the first time, students don't always have all the support they need to continue to first grade.

"So I developed a preschool program with an early childhood educator [Joan Bybee], who is recently retired," said Grace, adding that Ms Bybee helped her develop a curriculum that was shared with Dr Kalyesubula at ACCESS.

Survey questions were also shared with community members in Nakaseke to hear feedback about the potential program.

"So the preschool program has started and it has 30 families involved," Grace said. "And there are over 100 on a waiting list, including pregnant mothers. I was really excited, because they don't really value or see education as the same kind of importance as we do here, so I didn't expect it to be so overwhelming."

Fundraising And Other Challenges

Her next challenge will be to raise funds to build a school on ACCESS's compound, she said. Grace said she has created a Facebook page called "Uganda Reads" and she plans to raise money online.

She explained she could not raise money while working on the effort for her Girl Scout Gold Award, and instead she used money she won from participating in years of science fairs to jump start the program, along with donations from family and friends. The money has paid for a bus to bring students from home to the preschool, because there is no public school transportation in the area.

"Now that my Gold Award is completed, now I can actually start fundraising," she said.

Her plan is to make the school more sustainable, and she plans to be committed to the project for years to come.

Right now the school is running out of a room at ACCESS on Saturdays. During the rest of the week the room is used for ACCESS's nursing school, Grace said.

After returning from Uganda, Mrs Herrick said Grace kept photos of a girl she met there as inspiration.

Without Dr Kalyesubula and his wife, Estherloy, Grace said the project would not be happening.

"They are pretty much running it," said Grace, adding that two volunteer coordinators are running the preschool, too, and caregivers are helping.

Teaching is done through videos, she said, as there are not enough teachers in the country to help all of the students in need of an education.

"My program has a TV, which plays educational DVDs and videos, and that was kind of my idea in case the program coordinator for the day was illiterate or something," said Grace.

Many of the children attending the preschool, Grace said, are HIV positive and orphans. For the orientation, Grace said she donated toys she collected from friends and her own basement.

"The preschool is called Abaana Okusoma, which means the little ones learning to read," said Grace, adding that she had Tt-shirts donated and she designed a logo to be printed on each T-shirt with the name of the school.

Celebrating 100 Years Of The Gold Award

Before attending the Girl Scouts Capitol Hill Gold Award Centennial Celebration in Washington, Grace also received accolades at two recent events for earning her Girl Scout Gold Award.

"It was a record number of girls in the state recognized for earning their Gold Award," Grace said.

According to the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, 86 girls were honored at the state event on June 5, at Naugatuck Valley Community College. This year also marked the 100th anniversary of the Gold Award, the highest award a girl can earn in Girl Scouting.

On June 12, Grace and Newtown Gold Award recipient Anika Dholakia were honored at a ceremony at C.H. Booth Library. The event presented both girls with their 2016 Gold Awards.

Cat Fedorchek mentored Grace for her Gold Award project.

"She was really helpful," said Grace, adding that Mrs Fedorchek was at both the Newtown and state events.

"From green to gold her journey began much like our founding sister, Juliette Gordon Low, who created this movement with a dream and a strand of pearls," Mrs Fedorchek said about Grace's project on Wednesday, June 22. "Grace's began with a purpose to create a significant global impact and a passion to connect our community with a global organization to make a significant change. Grace's journey is one of discovery, connecting, taking action and leadership. In discovering her own potential she has inspired others to do the same. As her mentor, it was a privilege to watch this determined young woman achieve her vision and thrive during the various stages of the project."

Finally, Grace and Mrs Herrick traveled to Washington on June 14, for the Capitol Hill Gold Award Centennial Celebration.

"It was incredible. I was not expecting it at all," said Grace, about being one of eight girls from across the country chosen to attend the event.

Grace said roughly 400 people attended the event, and they "met a lot of people."

According to Girl Scouts of Connecticut, Grace was the only Girl Scout from Connecticut chosen to attend the national event. During the Capitol Hill celebration, more than 200 leaders from government, the military and academia came together to recognize and honor the girls and women who have earned the Gold Award over the past century. They were joined by Girl Scouts' National CEO Anna Maria Chévez and National Board President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan. Speakers included Brigadier General Diana Holland, commandant of cadets at the United States Military Academy, and Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, which awards Gold Award recipients' scholarships, according to Girl Scouts of Connecticut. The event was sponsored by Toyota Financial Services.

The other 2016 Girl Scout Gold Award recipients who were invited to attend the event were Sashini Passela of Virginia, Belle Bashaw of Colorado, Erica Daily of Georgia, Claire Evensen of Wisconsin, Hannah Gadd of Kentucky, Kamna Gupta of Indiana, Zahra Hajee of California, Uma Mahajan of California, Maiya McCrary of Texas and Claire Severin of Washington.

"It made me excited," Grace said about meeting the other awardees, "because Girl Scouts, a great platform, gives girls the opportunity to promote whatever they want. There are no boundaries."