Emma Borgie, Chrysanthe Frangos, and Camryn Kimura have reached the pinnacle of the Girl Scout leadership experience by earning the Girl Scout Gold Award.
The three Coronado residents were among a record 87 local Girl Scouts who were honored during a socially distanced Gold Award ceremony on the promenade at Liberty Station. San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan was the keynote speaker. Last April, DA Stephan was honored as one of Girl Scouts San Diego’s “Cool Women of 2021.” Just five percent of eligible Girl Scouts nationwide earn Gold Awards. The designation helps young women distinguish themselves in the college admissions process, become eligible for college scholarships, and enlist in the military at a higher pay grade.
Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award by demonstrating accomplishments in leadership, community service, career planning, and personal development. Each girl chooses a local or global issue she cares deeply about, thoroughly investigates the issue, creates a detailed plan to address it, recruits others to help her execute it, and take steps to ensure its sustainability. To overcome the challenges of pandemic restrictions, the 2021 Gold Award Girl Scouts had to significantly revise their approaches to executing their projects.
Emma is the daughter of Suzann Pia-Borgie and Rod Borgie. She has been a Girl Scout for nine years and belongs to Troop 5148, led by Nancy Mowry. This fall, Emma will begin her senior year at Coronado High School.
Emma invested more than 160 hours on her Gold Award project, implementing an extensive preschool disaster readiness program at Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church Preschool. Emma created hands-on educational activities, developed a preschool emergency bag program, produced videos about fire and earthquake safety, and appeared in a video about coping skills. The materials she created will continue to be used by the school, and they are available for other preschools that want to implement her program.
Chrysanthe joined Girl Scouts as a kindergartner. Christina Frangos—who leads her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop 4134—and John Frangos are her parents. Chrysanthe, a member of the Academy of Our Lady of Peace Class of 2021, will enter Stanford in September. Simultaneously studying for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she will major in earth systems and acquire a co-terminal degree in education. Her goal is to work as an educator and researcher at a zoo.
For her Gold Award project, Chrysanthe founded “Happy Habitats California,” an organization that teaches California third-graders a NGSS certified science unit about the environment, adaptations, local and endangered species, animals, ecosystems, and humans’ effects on the environment. Sacred Heart Parish School students are among the young Californians who completed lessons from her curriculum. Through Chrysanthe’s website and YouTube channel, other students and teachers can also access her lesson plans and videos. Her materials have been downloaded from the TeachersPayTeachers online educational marketplace more than 200 times.
When Camryn learned that a large percentage of congestive heart failure (CHF) patients are readmitted to the hospital within a month of discharge, she took action. Applying the digital art and communication skills she had developed through courses at Coronado School of the Arts and Coronado Middle School’s KCMS broadcast news program, she created a pamphlet and video to teach patients how to self-image their internal jugular veins. High-risk CHF patients can learn to use a portable ultrasound device at home and then video-call their cardiologists to check the effectiveness of diuretic medications.
Working with her father and other cardiologists, Camryn tested her instructional video on actual patients, then refined it. She also built a website where physicians can access the video and pamphlet and learn about patient self-imaging. More recently, she created additional videos about self-imaging other parts of the body.
Camryn, a recent Coronado High graduate, plans a career as a physician. She will spend the next eight years in Brown University’s Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), transitioning directly from her undergraduate studies into medical school. This 12-year veteran of Girl Scouting is a member of Troop 5548, led by Sherry Thompson-Taylor. Camryn’s parents are Kimberly and Bruce Kimura.
Girl Scouts is the world’s best leadership development organization for girls (#BestPlace4Girls). Through programs focused on the outdoors, STEM, life skills, outdoor adventure, and entrepreneurship, Girl Scouts prepares girls for a lifetime of leadership.
All girls in grades K-12 and adult volunteers are welcome to join. For information about Girl Scouting opportunities in Coronado, contact Regional Recruitment Specialist Alondra Alvarado at 619-610-0817 or [email protected], or visit sdgirlscouts.org.
