Dear atown,
My name is Hudson East and I am 13 years old and am currently working on my eagle scout project. I don't know much about the gold award project so my advice might not work for girl scouts. For my eagle scout project for boy scouts, the point of the project is to display my leadership skills and give me valuable experience for when I grow up. I chose to build a playground at an underpriveleged day care/church/neighbor hood in East Austin. I began my project last June, 2006 and I will be building the playground on April 28th, 2007. I had to do all the fundraising myself and have raised $28,000 out of the $35,000 that I need. For most eagle scout projects, the scout has to really sell his project to the Boy Scout Officials to prove he will display leadership. For my project, (the playground build), the officials had no problem approving the concept, because it totally demonstrated my leadership skills. I think that girl scouts will be able to do projects of this nature. For boy scouts, I have to lead the whole project. But I have set up team captains for each of the areas needed (I followed the Kaboom model.) I have 2 fellow boy scouts who are working towards their eagle projects and they are doing phase 2 and phase 3 at the daycare center. I am tearing down the old playground and building a new one. One eagle scout is putting in benches and water fountains and the other is putting in a trike path. Here is a link to my website (which I am in the process of updating and should be completed by next week) www.safeplayaustin.org Let me know if I can help you anymore.
Hudson