Junior earns Gold Award through the Little Leaders’ Love Closet
By Ellen Orr
Texas High junior Raven Ivory stays busy: she is a member of the drill team, is a student council representative, holds offices in multiple honor societies and clubs, serves as a yearbook editor, dances, volunteers at the hospital. And, importantly, she’s a Girl Scout. More specifically, she’s a proud recipient of The Gold Award, which she earned through over 10 years of service, culminating in her Gold Award project: creating the Little Leaders’ Love Closet at TISD’s Theron Jones Early Literacy Center.
The Little Leaders’ Love Closet contains clothing, shoes, and hygiene items that impoverished students may not have access to.
“I wanted to address the problem of poverty among young children,” Raven said. “I hoped to really impact [the children’s] lives by providing items necessary to live a healthy and clean lifestyle, to make them happier, focused more on learning, and feel more confident rather than embarrassed. Most students are bullied because of their appearance, but not everyone can afford to look and smell their best every day. Through the closet, students have free access to change clothes and wash up if they need to. This will cause the students to always look and smell their best, decreasing the amount of bullying.”
Completing the project required wide-reaching community organizing from Raven. She created a poster, explaining her project, and distributed copies all over Texarkana—mostly at religious and academic institutions. She also posted the information online, mailed letters to various charitable organizations, and gave speeches to the staff at Theron Jones and at her church. Immediately, she found herself fielding inquiries about the project and how people could get involved. “The entire Texarkana community was so great in helping me complete my project,” Raven said.
Very few girls who participate in Scouting earn the Gold Award—about five percent. Earning the Gold Award was an important accomplishment for Raven. While her primary motivation for completing the project was making a difference in her community, she is grateful that the Gold Award name carries importance. “It will help me earn college scholarships and distinguish myself in the college admissions process, which will greatly help me in accomplishing my future goals,” she said.
Those future goals are lofty, and Raven seems to be right on track to reaching them: the smart, hardworking eleventh grader plans to attend the University of Oklahoma upon graduating high school to pursue degrees in biology and chemistry. She’d then like to attend graduate school to become a surgical physician assistant.
No matter what Raven pursues in adulthood, she will undoubtedly continue to make the world a better place. In the meantime, the Little Leaders’ Love Closet remains a touchstone of safety for vulnerable children in our community. “I believe that my project will help to decrease the amount of bullying to underprivileged students,” she said. “And there’s not a limit on the amount of times a student can get an item, so they should never be worried about if there’s enough for them, because there will always be enough.”
