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player ready...The challenges of fundraising during a pandemic did not stop hundreds of Girl Scouts from across the North Shore this month from safely shopping, wrapping and delivering a truck-full of holiday presents to 34 families in need at a Chicago shelter.
The 7th annual “Project Elf,” a service project orchestrated by Girl Scouts Service Unit #462, which included 23 troops from schools in Wilmette, Winnetka, Glencoe, Kenilworth and Northfield, culminated in the delivery of holiday presents last week to ReVive Center for Housing and Healing at 1668 W. Ogden Ave., troop leader Heidel Graham said.
“Scouting is all about overcoming obstacles, so during this pandemic crisis, we’re trying to be creative as we see it through,” said Graham, a Wilmette resident whose three daughters represent the fourth generation of Girl Scouts in her family.
“I always tell my own kids, ‘We’re Girl Scouts, we can figure out and handle any problem, we just need to put our minds to it,'” Graham said.
Graham’s daughters first participated in a “Project Elf” initiative when the family lived in Virginia, and after moving to the North Shore, her daughter, Linnea, “was adamant that we do the same thing here.”
The first year, Graham launched the project with just her troop, but six years later, it now has been extended to include the entire Service Unit.
But for Graham and her daughters, the inspiration to be of service to the community precedes the arrival of the pandemic, and can be traced back to her own late grandmother, Signe Howell, who attended her last Girl Scout meeting at the age of 100.
“We pushed her in her wheelchair out to a fire circle at camp … she led songs,” Graham recalled. “When she died, my troop did a flag ceremony at her funeral.”
“Girl Scouts has provided four generations of our family with the opportunity to build girls of courage, confidence, and character,” Graham said, adding: “As they have for the last 108 years, Girl Scouts continue to ‘help people at all times,’ making that part of the Girl Scout Promise a reality.”
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