Gold Awards

Three of our members are currently pursuing the highest honor in Girl Scouting, the Girl Scout Gold Award, following in the footsteps of our recent alumna Emily, who earned her award in August 2024. Emily’s project strengthened the outreach framework the Techalongs use to increase girls’ participation in FIRST robotics and STEM education by creating sustainable program models that our team continues to implement today. Inspired by her example of leadership and service, two of these of these members have committed to designing and executing an 80+ hour project that not only serves the community but also creates resources that will continue to benefit FIRST teams and participants long after the projects are complete. 

Together, these Gold Award projects reflect the Techalongs’ philosophy that technical excellence and service are inseparable, while supporting our overall mission of supporting Girls in STEM. Each initiative transforms skills learned through robotics (design thinking, collaboration, prototyping, and perseverance) into meaningful community impact. By creating tools, partnerships, and teaching models that others can sustain, these members are ensuring their work will continue to inspire girls to explore STEM long into the future.

Eleanor, Gold Award, In Progress

Expanding Access through Apps

Eleanor is developing a free mobile app that increases accessibility to Girl Scouts  badge lesson plans for the FIRST community. Currently, many teams want to host robotics badge workshops but struggle to locate age-appropriate materials, align them with badge requirements, or adapt them for limited meeting times. Eleanor’s app will centralize vetted lesson plans, supply lists, time estimates, and facilitation tips into a searchable, user-friendly platform. She is designing it so teams can filter by grade level, available equipment, and meeting duration, allowing even small or rookie teams to confidently host outreach events. By lowering the barrier to entry, her project empowers more teams to engage with local Girl Scout troops, multiplying opportunities for girls to experience hands-on engineering, programming, and problem-solving in welcoming environments. 

In addition to coding the application, Eleanor is conducting user testing with robotics mentors to ensure the interface is intuitive and adaptable. She is also creating documentation so future students can maintain and expand the app, ensuring the project remains a living resource rather than a one-time deliverable. Her long-term vision is to create a sustainable bridge between youth organizations and robotics teams, enabling scalable outreach that can grow organically across communities.

Lila, Gold Award, Proposal In Progress

As our team lead for the m.e.FIRST program, Lila is building on an interest in promoting menstrual equity.  She will be working on a humanitarian-focused initiative that combines engineering-minded problem solving with practical life skills. She will be creating sustainable, reusable hygiene supplies while teaching participants foundational sewing and fabrication techniques. Her workshops will introduce students to pattern design, material selection, and iterative improvement—mirroring the engineering design process while addressing a real-world need.

As part of this effort, Lila has contacted with Fenix FTC Team 25865, whom she met at the FIRST Championship. She intends to expand  Fenix’s outreach program that distributes supplies to girls in Comoros, a small African island nation. Lila intends to  develop scalable production methods and educational modules so that other teams can replicate the efforts. By teaching volunteers how to create the supplies themselves, the program reduces cost, builds local ownership, and ensures continuity of support.

Beyond the tangible products, Lila’s project emphasizes dignity, education, and empowerment. Participants not only contribute to an international cause but also gain confidence in using tools, following technical instructions, and seeing how STEM skills can directly improve lives. She will document workshop models and supply-chain strategies so additional teams can adopt the program and adapt it to other communities in need.

Emily, Gold Award, 2024

Girl Scouts in STEM

Emily hopes to have a career in engineering and therefore decided to focus on STEM education for her project.  To do so, she joined the Techalongs FTC robotics team and work on enlarging their impact.  She was instrumental in expanding their footprint in the FIRST community and their successes in the 2023-2024 season.  

As a part of her work, she greatly expanded the team's outreach efforts, offering multiple badge and engineering workshops to Girl Scouts of all ages and organizing outreach events to publicize the both the team and FIRST robotics.  

In the off-season, Emily designed a day camp program for over 100 girls who were introduced to basic robotics over the course of a week.  

Emily was awarded Gold for over 200 hours of work in August 2024.