Gold Award Girl Scout - Sarah Marotz
Cheyenne Girl Scout Earns Prestigious Gold Award
Billings, MT— January 16, 2024 — Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming (GSMW) is proud to recognize Sarah Marotz for earning her Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest achievement a Girl Scout can earn.
Gold Award Girl Scouts, like Marotz of Cheyenne, are changing the world today—their ingenuity enables them to meaningfully address some of the most pressing issues facing their communities and the world.
For her Gold Award Project, Marotz worked with her 4H chapter to create project specific rubrics for static judges, superintendents, and clerks to use when judging static projects. Static categories include Animal Science, Expressive Arts, Healthy Living, Leadership and Civil Engagement, Natural Resource Education, and Science in Technology. Based upon her personal experience with Cake Decorating, an expressive art, she learned that judges for the static categories did not have adequate tools to judge and provide positive feedback to the participants. “Static projects are often over looked in 4H. This project gave me the opportunity to promote static projects along with helping youth improve their static projects and get feedback on their project” stated Marotz.
Marotz created guide templates for judges on how to score each category. She trained the judges at the county fair, taught them how to use the templates and rubrics, and then served as a clerk at the fair so she could easily gain feedback from the judges and make improvements. In order to assist the judges, Marotz created a Judging 101 presentation for all new and seasoned static judges. “This had a lot of positive feedback because not only could they learn how to use the rubric, but it also had sample questions, ribbon system, and basic youth judging information” she states.
In order to make this project sustainable, a requirement of all Girl Scout Gold Awards, Marotz partnered with Laramie County Fair to utilize her templates and rubrics moving forward. These guides are also available to youth on their website to assist with planning their projects. She also created a training video for judges to watch each year.
The Gold Award is the highest achievement a Girl Scout can earn, available to girls in high school by developing and carrying out lasting solutions to issues in their communities and beyond. Gold Award Girl Scouts address the root cause of a problem, plan and implement innovative solutions to drive change, and lead a team of people to success. Gold Award Girl Scouts truly are the world changers, role models, and real-life heroes we all look up to. They’re excellent candidates for colleges, scholarships, competitive internship programs, and exciting careers.
To learn more, visit www.gsmw.org.
