COVID Warriors!
Over the past several months, I have been working on my Girl Scouts Gold Award, a large scale community service project aimed to tackle a certain societal issue. This page covers the efforts I made in combatting a community issue that is relevant on a local, regional, national, and global scale.
Girls Scouts Gold Award
For my Gold Award project, COVID Warriors, my primary aim was to educate the homeless youth on correct protocol regarding sanitation and masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a series of workshops I conducted at The Drake House, a transitional center for homeless single mothers and their minor children, I was able to teach children from the ages of 5-12 everything there is to know about the spread and infiltration of COVID-19, the do's and don'ts of mask wearing, the Delta variant, and safety techniques. By the end of these workshops, these kids were able to demonstrate what they learned with a 'bingo' game where they performed demos. As a cute way to wrap up their efforts, I created a 'COVID Warrior' scarecrow with the kids at the Drake House to be displayed in the Alpharetta Scarecrow Festival! This scarecrow demonstrates the importance of PPE- Personal Protection Equipment, and safety practices like hand sanitizing and vaccines! In addition to my endeavors at the Drake House, I also worked with another homeless shelter, called Rebirth Metro Atlanta Inc. - where I educated over 100 members of the homeless community. Through their event for the homeless of the metro Atlanta area, I procured resources from large organizations, including Target, Kroger, and Trader Joes, including hand sanitizers, hand soaps, alcohol wipes, and disposable masks.
COVID Warriors Educational Workshop
The photos featured above showcase the educational workshops designed for kids aged 5-12 years old. However, this presentation can be modified in such a way that it can adhere to any age group!
Workshop 1: Overview of COVID-19, Testing, Vaccinations
Workshop 2: All About Masks!
Workshop 3: Sanitation and After Care of Masks/ Making your own mask!
Workshop 4: Review with BINGO Game and Demos
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*Recordings of all workshops on Youtube.*
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The coronavirus pandemic remains a highly dangerous, widespread, and prevalent issue in my community. This project aims to tackle the challenges, brought upon the community given the lack of resources and education on COVID-19. This virus' prevalence has made mask-wearing a civic responsibility in the community. Often, the homeless population can find itself in a position where these responsibilities are near impossible to fulfill. Resources for COVID-19, adequate masks, and information about the do’s and don’ts of the pandemic are not readily available to the homeless population, let alone the homeless youth. The target audience of my project is the homeless population of Atlanta, specifically children of the ages 5-12, driven by the root cause of a lack of proper COVID safety education.
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In the initial stages of the pandemic, as schools were getting shut down, including my own,The World Health Organization declared what was merely a public health emergency, as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The mystery, uncertainty, and prospect of possibility associated with COVID-19 guided my curiosity into researching more about the etiology of a pandemic. This search revealed that the global pandemic was caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Transmission of the virus is made possible when infected persons are in close contact with others and contaminated surfaces.
Another more personal motivation was my own illness I suspect to have been COVID-19. At the beginning of February of 2020, before the first official coronavirus case was declared in Georgia, I began experiencing unrelenting and high fevers, loss of taste/smell, shortness of breath, and other unfamiliar symptoms. I knew this was not the flu, not the average cold, but something foreign.
As the spread became exponential, it got me thinking about how imperative mask wearing in the community is. The pandemic does not spare anyone regardless of stature or state, if they fail to adhere to proper safety measures. As a collective, we must protect ourselves by protecting each other; saving a life could mean saving yours! My duty as a citizen of my community involved using my voice to educate those around me on proper safety protocols, with emphasis on mask wearing.