Medford Girl Scout Troops 24206 and 24207 are proof that you can never be too young to make a positive difference in the community.
After a friend of the troop members’ baby girl was admitted to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, they saw their opportunity to lend a helping hand.
“The chaos of the emergency prolonged their stay a bit and they often ran out of toiletries in the family hospitality room, so we wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again or to any other patients,” leader of Troop 24207 Susana Lydic said. “They go through enough being in the hospital. They shouldn’t have to worry about little things like this.”
Lydic and her troop teamed up with Tracy Wingate and her troop to make this all possible.
“We do pretty much everything together to make sure that we have the proper adult-to-child ratio present at each meeting,” Lydic said.
There are six girls involved in the drive, Sofia Lydic and Hannah Pierce from Troop 24207, and Melody Lobach, Emilee Griffith, Madisyn Wingate and Samantha Wingate from Troop 24206. They are all Medford residents and are only in the fourth grade.
The girls have been together since November and brainstormed the idea for the drive months ago.
“This is the first time ever doing anything like this for both the kids and the parents,” Lydic said.
The troops were able to find three local companies that volunteered as drop-off locations for people looking to help with donations for the drive.
After using ties within the troop, the group was able to pull some strings and get the Chick-fil-A on Route 73 North in Marlton, The Famous Razor and Qwik Pack & Shop to help by using their stores as locations to drop off travel-sized toiletries for CHOP.
“We are encouraging contributors to donate travel-sized products because they are smaller and more convenient for the patients’ families to grab and take with them,” Lydic said.
They plan to host some drop-off boxes at the girls’ houses as well to maximize the total products they are able to bring in. The girls also plan to create a flyer they will be going door-to-door with to raise awareness for the drive.
Troop leaders expressed joy in seeing the process unfold from an early idea to completion for such young kids.
“It’s been a lot of fun seeing the girls get excited brainstorming the idea and then getting emotionally involved once the process began, just thinking about what the families are going through and what we could do to help,” Lydic said.
The girls plan to take a final trip at the end and drop off all the products they were able to acquire through donations at CHOP to see the gratifying looks they will surely receive from the families.
No specific number of donations will decide whether this was a successful idea.
“Anything we can provide to help people in a time of need like this will be considered a success,” Lydic said. “Plus, the experience for the girls is a very unique one that they will benefit from.”
The troops encourage anyone willing to make a small donation to stop by any of these drop box locations from May 18–23 with your travel-sized toiletries. All contributions are appreciated.
Items such as, but not limited to, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush/toothpaste deodorant and soap will be accepted.
