Hannah T's Girl Scout Blog Spot: February 2014

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

End of School Pens for Kids Collection

I collected an overall 14,816 pens through my school. Overall, I have collected 15,836. Thanks for buying cookies to help support me ship the pens! It costs 10 cents a pen to ship, so I'm spending over $1,500 to ship pens, the equivalent of over 2,000 boxes of cookies!

About Me

Hi! My name is Hannah Takasuka and I am a Girl Scout Ambassador. I have been a Girl Scout since 2006 and have completed my Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards. The Gold Award is the Girl Scout equivalent to the Eagle Scout, and is the highest award in Girl Scouting. Outside of Girl Scouts, I have a busy school schedule (5 AP/IB classes) and run for my school's cross country and track teams. I hope to continue to running cross country in college, major in biomedical engineering, and potentially continue on to medical school. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, learning languages (Esperanto, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish) and watching Netflix.

My Gold Award Project: Engineering the Community

I created an engineering club at my school to combine the aspects of STEM and serving the community. The highlight of the club was hosting the iEngineer Week, an engineering summer camp with Oak View, a Title 1 elementary school. I worked with fifth-grade students in the El Viento Foundation, which focuses on helping the economically disadvantaged Oak View Latino community to graduate high school, attend college, and succeed in life. Over 80% of the students said that they would someday want to become an engineer, and the club will continue at my high school. Future cookie proceeds will also be used to fund the club and iEngineer Week. See a video of my project on Youtube at tinyurl.com/HannahGold

Silver Award: Pens for Kids

In Africa, one pen can cost half a day's wages. Therefore, most people can't afford pens. Although education may be free, most people don't go to school because they have nothing to write with. Could you imagine going to school or work without a pen or pencil?

Pens for Kids is an organization that is based in Denmark. People drop off their pens there and they send them off to Africa. In Africa, they have people from different countries distribute the pens for free. I will send pens to Africa directly. Please help by taking the few minutes of going through your drawers to find ballpoint pens (felt dry out in the hot sun) that your household doesn't commonly use. If you have the time, it would also be greatly appreciated if you checked if the pens are working or not because there is no point in sending a pen that doesn't work!

As I am finished with my Silver Award, I am no longer sending pens to Africa, but please email me if you are interested on sending them yourself. I know a Pens for Kids ambassador in Kenya who keeps updates on arriving packages of pens, and there is also one in Tanzania who will email you a picture of the kids with the pens and them holding up a sign that says "Donated by [your name]."

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

End of School Pens for Kids Collection

Blog Archive

Translate