Girl Scout Amanda McNally earned her Silver Award by helping other teenagers like her.
Here are some fun facts about Amanda McNally, a Girl Scout and incoming sophomore at Seneca High School: She plays the piano. Her favorite Girl Scout cookies are thin mints. She once helped make a quilt for teenage girls at Robins’ Nest, a children’s service agency for girls ages 14–17 going through family trouble based in Atlantic City.
The quilt project was part of McNally’s Silver Award project — the second-most prestigious award given by the Girl Scouts of the USA after the Gold Award, which McNally plans to complete at a later date.
“My original idea was that I wanted to make a garden to symbolize hope and I wanted to donate toiletries to the house,” McNally said. “But then I went there and [LeAnn DiBenedetto, my project advisor who was also a licensed clinical social worker at Robins’ Nest] was like ‘well we already have toiletries for these girls,’ and so we had to think of something else.”
DiBenedetto told McNally there used to be a lady who made quilts for each of the girls as a gift upon their graduation from the program, but she had sadly passed away.
“So they were like ‘alright that’s something that you could do for us,’” McNally said. “‘We need gifts to give to the girls when they leave.’”
At first, McNally wasn’t thrilled her garden idea was shot down.
“I’m very bullheaded, and I was like this is what I wanted to do!” she said. “It took a lot of convincing to get me to want to change it, but we did change it.”
So McNally, along with her Seneca friend and partner for the project Erika Adamson, got to work.
Step 1: Learn how to make a quilt.
“My aunt gave me the information of a quilter in Mt. Holly … and she actually helped us make our own quilt,” McNally said. “She was really eager to help.”
Problem was, making quilts takes a lot longer than McNally and Adamson expected it to.
“We wanted to make five of our own quilts, but we only got to finish one,” she said.
With the help of two other local organizations, Berry Basket Quilters and Love Apple Quilters, McNally acquired 16 more quilts free of charge to donate to Robins’ Nest. That’s 17 quilts total.
In addition to the quilts, McNally and Adamson included notes to give to the girls who were graduating from the program. Here’s a taste of some of the notes:
“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” said one, which was a quote from Abraham Lincoln. “Your future is so bright, I need shades,” read another.
McNally’s mother, Janice — who gets credit for driving Amanda to all the quilt shops and to Robins’ Nest in Atlantic City every time she needed to stop by — is very proud of what her daughter accomplished.
“The biggest thing was hearing people’s responses to her. I didn’t realize when one lady from the quilting group said ‘it renews my faith in teenagers,’” she said.
McNally is proud of her project as well, but at the moment, she’s looking forward to her Gold Award project.
“I’m in between working with the elderly and continuing on with my silver in a different way,” she said about what direction to go in for her Gold Award.
“I’ve grown to appreciate and want to work with this kind of thing more. So I think I might want to top this with my Gold or work with the elderly for my Gold because I’m also really close with my grandparents and my family, too.”
