Scout Hall Safety Award Earned
Article written by Anya, a Redwood High School student. Spring 2022
Kate W. is currently a sophomore at Redwood, and in addition to being a devoted scholar and athlete, she also does a tremendous amount of work that greatly impacts the town of Mill Valley. Kate is currently involved in installing emergency equipment into Scout Hall, a community center in Mill Valley, that will include bandaids, tampons, and most importantly, automated external defibrillator (AED) equipment. Noticing the lack of safety in Scout Hall, Winter began to think of an idea to ensure safety.
Kate's journey of doing work for the community first started at Girl Scouts. Kate began Girl Scouts in Kindergarten and is still continuing today. Kate's mom, first got Kate into Girl Scouts and helped Kate initially think of an idea to qualify for a Gold Award (The highest achievement award for USA Girl Scouts).
“Scout Hall did not really have a safety section, and Kate thought and talked through adding one into the Hall,” Samantha stated.
“I started this around January last year… I worked on it a little with my mom, but also [with] the people who worked at Scout Hall,” Kate stated. From January up until now, she has been searching for equipment to add to the cabinet that will soon be installed.
Even though installing the equipment at Scout Hall did not end up qualifying for a Gold Award, Kate still had a passion to continue with the project.
“I had already gotten pretty far into the project and it was exciting. It was really cool to see that I was actually changing the community and I decided to keep going with it.” While working on this project, Kate has stepped out of her comfort zone multiple times in order to bring her idea to the Board of Scout Hall, reached out to find medical equipment, and spent a great amount of time working to get all the pieces together to make this idea a reality.
“[Scout hall] got recently renovated but the safety was not updated and it was a really unsafe situation, so I saw that clearly needed to be fixed, so I decided to focus my work on that building,” Kate stated. “All of the equipment isn't in the building yet since I haven't gotten the cabinet, but I imagine that since tons of people go through that building every day, the cabinet that I put in the building can help people with small or big problems. For if someone needs a band-aid or a tampon [the cabinet] can be helpful to them, or if there's a major emergency and I helped save someone's life by putting the AED in the building, it's just crazy to think about.”
Today, Scout Hall is actively used for a variety of different activities such as a meeting place for Girl Scouts and Scouts, award banquets, bar mitzvahs or holy communions, and many more events. The building is rented out by adults for events so that it is able to be used for free by the kids.
With a lot of youth actively using the building, safety is a high priority. Michelle Patterson is currently a part of the Board at Scout Hall where she regulates many of the activities that take place at Scout Hall.
“In my mind, if you have children in a space that's a community space, it really needs to be safe,” Michelle said. “As we are hosting guests who rent the hall for events along with hosting kids, we really feel a responsibility to keep kids and adults safe while using the hall.”
With Kate's emergency equipment being installed in the building, it ensures the safety of not only kids, but also adults, and makes the building a place where kids can have fun and feel safe.
“We want to make sure that the equipment is easily accessible, and now you can easily see them and use them thanks to Kate,” stated Michelle. “My kids have done events at the hall, and knowing that should an accident happen they have all the safety equipment within reach really matters to me as a parent.”