Marion Chester Read Award: Sharyn

Sharyn holds a myriad of roles in Girl Scouts. She is an archery instructor who has undergone additional training to assist at council events and assist other volunteers in earning the certifi cation that allows them to supervise archery activities. Sharyn also serves as a volunteer learning facilitator, specializing in outdoor skills. In training, she encourages troop leaders to get their girls outdoors more and helps ensure that they feel comfortable with safely starting, maintaining, and cooking over a fire. With her high level of outdoor experience, she is currently serving on a committee working to expand the council’s outdoor skills training curriculum; this curriculum will help teach leaders who may not be comfortable in the outdoors how to do everything from taking their Brownies on a day hike to taking their high school girls on a multi-day backpacking adventure.

Sharyn also serves as a troop leader for a group of older girls who routinely run badge and journey clinics for troops. They help other troops earn their journey awards and badges while modeling for the troop leaders both the leadership opportunities that become available as girls age, and how to provide the Girl Scout Leadership Experience in ways that are engaging and exciting, while also encouraging girls to grow their skills.

Sharyn isn’t one to sit back and wait for things to happen. When she sees a gap or an opportunity to improve the Girl Scout program in southeastern Wisconsin, she either jumps in to fi ll the gap, or passes on her ideas. If she thinks something needs to be added or changed, she presents her thoughts and always follows them up with, “and how can I help make that happen?” Her can-do attitude and her passion for continuously improving the Girl Scout experience for girls is much appreciated and extremely valuable to GSWISE.

The Marion Chester Read Award honors volunteers who have received the Thanks Badge and are still showing additional support to Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast.

To qualify for the award, the nominee must be an active, registered adult Girl Scout, have received the Thanks Badge for past accomplishments, have demonstrated noteworthy volunteerism, modeled the Girl Scout spirit, and shared their skills and talents to advance the Girl Scout mission.

To be submitted for initial consideration to the staff or volunteer committees, a minimum of one nomination and one endorsement from a second individual are required.

Once approved to move forward by the staff or volunteer committee, the nomination and endorsement are submitted to the GSWISE Board of Directors for final approval.