Childhood Goal Comes True For Girl Scout Nichole Ehnes Mt. Spokane Junior Receives Gold Award For Playground Project

When Nichole Ehnes was a 5-year-old Brownie, she told her mom she was going to get the Gold Award.

“I’m gonna do it,” she remembered saying. “I’m gonna go all the way.”

The highest award a Girl Scout can earn, the Gold Award is given to girls who excel at leadership, community service and personal development.

And Monday night, Ehnes’ prophecy was realized.

“As a young person, it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever commit to do because you want to,” the Mt. Spokane High School junior said of the Gold award. “It’s a symbol of commitment of so much time and work…and all the things Girl Scouts is.”

About 80 people, including Ehnes’ family members, friends and Girl Scout and Mead School District officials attended the award ceremony, held at Farwell Elementary School.

In addition to years of preparatory projects - earning three pins and four patches - the Gold Award requires ambitious Girl Scouts to take on a project of their choosing, which must also be approved by the national Girl Scout council. Ehnes chose to help facilitate the installation of new playground equipment at Farwell.

Through the mother of one of the girls in her troop, Ehnes learned of a difficult situation at Farwell last year. Students had raised enough money to buy new playground equipment, but fell short of the installation costs. She decided to take on the challenge.

After a call to then PTO president Karen Stebbins, Ehnes learned that not only did no one have any idea how to install the equipment, but there also weren’t any people to do it.

So, Ehnes started rounding up parent volunteers. She coordinated the removal of the old equipment with the delivery of the new. She secured donations of food for the workers. She got donations of cement, figured out what an auger was and then found one of those too.

“Nichole always came through on what she said she’d do,” Stebbins said. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”

For a while though, Ehnes said she wondered if she’d be able to do everything.

“It seemed like so much,” she said, “and it all had to be done within two months, before school started.”

But she kept her eyes on the Gold Award and leaned on what she’d learned to get her that far.

“I’d gone too far to give up,” she said. A Girl Scout for 11 years, Ehnes, 16, devoted years to preparing for the Gold Award project. Her myriad pins and patches each represent hours and months of community service, research and skill development.

Ehnes figures she put in about 85 hours on the playground project, start to finish. The actual equipment installation took two full days of work by about 40 volunteers.

“I’m very happy it all went together smoothly,” she said. “But it wouldn’t have happened without the volunteers. By myself, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

From the experience, Ehnes takes away not only a dime-sized gold pin and the thanks of a community, but also a valuable first-hand lesson.

“It seemed so huge to me, and if one thing went wrong, we couldn’t do anything,” she said. “But if you break things down, you can do anything.”