Four Chatham Teens Earn Girl Scouts' Highest Honor

New Jersey Assemblywomen Mila Jasey and Nancy Munoz will help honor Friday 25 Chatham girls for the Girl Scouts gold or silver award for service to the community.

Chatham Borough Council President Victoria Fife, Chatham Township Mayor Kevin Sullivan and Chatham Township Police Lt. Maureen Kazaba will also attend the event.

The ceremony and reception will be held at the Presbyterian Church of Chatham Township from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

Four girls will receive the Gold Award, Girl Scouts’ highest honor. All high school seniors, the girls spent one to two years on their projects.

Gold Award recipients are:

Eleanor Zagoren founded a violin performance group that travels to local nursing homes and assisted living residences to play for the residents. This group of violinists devoted tremendous effort into making these performances successful.

Tess Kolker founded a Global Awareness Club at Chatham High School to help students understand humanitarian issues around the world and also organized a Global Health Forum and the first annual Global Awareness Benefit Concert at CHS.

Meghan LeMon created a Children's Book Club for third- and fourth-grade boys and girls at the Library of the Chathams. The project addressed the issue of children not being engaged in reading and not wanting to read on their own.

Ashley Gapusan created Girl Power, a workshop teaching young girls how to improve their self esteem. It also focused on inner beauty, beauty around the world and beauty throughout time.

Gold Award candidates who will be commended at the ceremony are Kayla Langborgh, who created a website called Kindness is Cool as an anti-bullying vehicle, and Alexandra Cote, who launched a program for each senior class at CHS to design a wall commemorating their class.

Nineteen Chatham girls earned the coveted Silver Award. The eighth- and ninth-graders spent about 50 hours on each project, which included creating a website for the siblings of autistic children, speaking at an Earth Day assembly at Washington Avenue School, creating a T-shirt design contest for the St. Patrick's Community 5K run, hosting a game night for children at a homeless shelter, making fleece blankets and doll clothes to cheer up patients at Overlook Hospital, painting cougar paw stencils on key walking paths to encourage students to walk to school and making 1,000 origami cranes for the non-profit organization Cranes for Cancer.