Cultural Holidays, Girl Scout Week, Others Acknowledged By Township Council
Girl Scout Week, National Nutrition Month Hindu and Muslim holidays and Women’s History Month were acknowledged at the March 15 Township Council meeting.
The council proclaimed March 12-18 as Girl Scout week in the township in a proclamation that noted nearly 300 township girls participate in the scouting program.
A number of Girl Scouts from Girl Scout Service Unit 67 attended the meeting, and several talked about projects that earned them the scouts’ Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouts.
Adia Fielder, a senior at the Groton School in Massachusetts, talked about her program called “Little Music Makers.” During the program, Fielder worked with children at The Center For Great Expectations, teaching them about a wide variety of instruments.
Heather Attansio talked about her project helping at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick.
Attansio, a senior at Franklin High School, focused her project on the needs of parents of children in the NICU. Her project provided care packages, hand-made hats, voice recorders, books (in English and Spanish), journals and pens, and for the most unexpected and heart-wrenching circumstances, hand-made burial gowns.
Kiera Smith, a senior at The Pingry School, created a support group for the children of caretakers of parents with dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease “and ways they could help their loved ones, typically, grandparents, trough these tough times.”
Smith said the group discovered that “it was OK to speak up. It’s better to be more informed, and I think that’s what my support group established.”
China Eason’s project was designed to help senior citizens suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. Called “A Lifetime of Memories Through Music,” it entailed providing seniors at Spring Hills Assisted Living with CDs containing about 30 songs “just to help them remember their childhoods,” she said.
Eason said she also taught the seniors how to use CD players and iPods.
The council also issued proclamations acknowledging the Indian celebration of Holi and the Persian New Year, Nowruz, as well as proclamations acknowledging National Women’s Month and National Nutrition Month.