Troop 82559 of the Lynnfield Girl Scouts ran the “Bottle & Can Drive” at the Zero Waste Recycling Event, which was organized by the Department of Public Works on Saturday morning. Charlotte Beccia and Anna Ralavicus were among the troop members who volunteered.
According to Diane Courtney, service coordinator for the Lynnfield Girl Scouts, the goal of the event was to collect money by redeeming bottles. Ultimately, the money will be used to fund the Girl Scouts’ community-service projects.
The event was the first project the Girl Scouts have taken up since the School Committee scrapped recently introduced facility fees for the use of Lynnfield High School classrooms for the scouts’ troop meetings.
“The policy revision has been really helpful because we’ve had a really slow start to our Girl Scouts year,” Courtney said. “I’ve spent my September and October building our case, helping the other troops make sure that everybody has a spot to meet and plan our activities and projects.”
Before the School Committee decided to exempt Girl Scouts from paying facility fees, Courtney said that the troops were having difficulty finding places to hold their meetings. The Center Church was used as an alternative meeting spot.
“We are so grateful to the church for jumping through hoops to try and accommodate us when they found out that we didn’t have a place to meet,” Courtney said. “But the issue was for the younger girls who were in after-school programs and couldn’t commute from the school to the church.”
According to Courtney, many girls were not able to attend Girl Scout meetings due to transportation issues.
“The accessibility issue was huge,” Courtney said. “We couldn’t even carpool because there were so many girls. For example, the first-grade troop at Huckleberry Hill School has 21 girls, our biggest group. We couldn’t find a place for them to meet. So meeting immediately after school is such a big help for all the families.”
The Girl Scouts are planning a couple of events for the coming weeks, including projects on Veterans Day and the annual “December Sing-Along.”
“The first Saturday of December we have our ‘Sing-Along’ event,” Courtney said. “The Girl Scouts gather the community and sing holiday songs. That’s the tradition in town, which everybody loves, and one we are very excited about.”
