Downey girl earns Girl Scout's top award

Downey resident Carolina Barbosa has been awarded the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can earn. 

Only 6% of eligible Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award, which requires planning and implementation of a challenging, large-scale project that has a lasting impact on its targeted community with an emphasis on sustainability. 

Carolina’s Gold Award project was sparked by her volunteer experience at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Religious Education program here in Downey. Because of this experience, she took on the challenge of creating an entirely new teen program at the St. Linus parish in Norwalk.

The new teen assistant program was meant to not only aid the religious education teachers in the classroom, but to help the children be more engaged in their lessons, while allowing teens to play a larger part in their church community.