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ROSWELL, GA. – Several local Girl Scouts have completed projects at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, enhancing the visitor experience.

Kyra Bard, Chloe Enderle, and Irene Palacios-Rodriguez of Troop 11763 selected CNC as the benefactor for their Silver Award Project. They created a Little Free Library inside CNC and filled it with books.

The girls designed, built, and decorated the library and sourced nature books for the initial collection. The library itself has a butterfly design, building off CNC’s efforts to support local butterflies and pollinators.

The scouts have been together for the last nine years under the leadership of Michelle Bard, who also serves as the director of the Milton Service Unit. Together the scouts said they enjoyed the painting of the library and collecting the books. When asked if they had any advice for other scouts working toward their Silver Award, they said, “Don’t wait until the last minute, and be sure to plan ahead!” Do they have plans to earn their Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouting? The answer was a resounding “Yes!” 

The Silver Award is the highest award a Cadette (grades 6-8) scout can earn. Scouts are charged with identifying a need in their community, building a team of project members, selecting and developing the project, making plans and putting it in motion, and finally reflecting, sharing their story, and celebrating their success.

Similarly, a new ADA-compatible audio tour of the Watershed Gallery is available for public use thanks to a thoughtful scout.

The audio tour leads the visitor on an in-depth tour of the Chattahoochee Nature Center’s indoor museum, the Watershed Gallery. It educates visitors about the local watershed environment of the Chattahoochee River surrounding the nature center by leading them throughout the gallery’s many exhibits.

During the tour, the listener is informed about many different informative topics. For example, the visitor will learn about what makes a watershed and the myriad of flora and fauna that inhabit the ecosystems. One of the most important topics covered in the tour is why we must take responsibility for protecting and keeping the Chattahoochee River and its surrounding habitats clean.

The audio tour is ADA-compliant because it allows visually impaired visitors to the CNC to have equally fun and educational experiences. It does this by using specific locations and easy directions to help visitors navigate through the Watershed Gallery. It also uses descriptive language in order to describe each and every exhibit in detail.

Annie Hankamer, a Girl Scout Ambassador and senior at Alan C. Pope High School in Marietta, decided to take action after finding out that the Chattahoochee Nature Center did not have an ADA-compliant audio tour. For her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Hankamer wrote, recorded, and edited the Watershed Gallery audio tour for the general public to use. She was also able to create an audio tour creation guide in the hopes that future scouts will continue her mission of providing the nature center with accessible, ADA-compliant audio tours.

“I wanted for everyone who visits the Chattahoochee Nature Center to have an equal opportunity to have fun and learn about nature,” said Hankamer. “In completing this project, I have discovered how to lead a team, be confident, solve difficult problems, but most importantly, discover a passion for making positive changes in my community.”

The Chattahoochee Nature Center values the projects done by scouts – both boy and girl scouts – throughout its 127 acres. Many of these projects help the visitor experience, connecting them with nature. For information on how to submit a scout project, click here.