Utilizing Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts for Help with 9-1-1 Public Education

Beth English and Girl Scout Lauren Alexander

Have you ever considered utilizing Girl Scouts or Boys Scouts to help with your public education efforts? As many people know, for Girl Scouts to earn their Gold Award and Boy Scouts to earn their Eagle Scout Award, they have to do a big project that gives back to the community.

Recently, Beth English, the Director of Communications for the City of Rowlett, Texas, was able to utilize a Girl Scout to help with a public education initiative. Here’s her story!

“It was a stroke of pure luck, actually! I was going through her mother, who is a Proforma franchisee, to order stuff for the Texas NENA booth,” Beth said. “I asked her about printing up some business cards for Smart911, and it was while we were talking about this, that her mother told me about the Gold Award and that it would be a good project for her to work on.”

Beth met with the Girl Scout, Lauren Alexander, and they discussed exactly what Beth is doing with Smart911. Lauren then sat with Beth in the Communications office so she could see how the calls come in, what the challenges are, and how they process the medical calls.

“We discussed our timeline as far as when I will get to implement Smart911 and when her project is due,” Beth said. “We also batted around some ideas for different groups she could spread the message to, different media types she could use, and others that she could contact for help.”

Lauren put all the information about her project with 9-1-1 into a report for the Girl Scout board for them to approve. Once they gave approval, Lauren got to work right away with Beth on her Gold Award project.

The project will take a while to complete, but so far, Lauren has already established relationships with various organizations in order to have sign up sheets for Smart911 at their business locations. Lauren is also working on getting donations set up to fund any printing paperwork she may need to help spread the word. She is also working on getting businesses to donate food items for events where the Smart911 information can be shared.

Beth promises that once Lauren has completed the project, she will update us on the successes and benefits of this collaboration so please stay tuned!