This month Girl Scout Tenaya Cherrick earned the Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouting, for her project Learn to Love and the Feelings Forecast. Fewer than six percent of Girl Scouts earn it in any year. It recognizes young women who create sustainable, community-focused change.
She is also the first Girl Scout in the Klamath Basin to earn the award in more than a decade.
Tenaya's project centers on helping young people understand, name and navigate their emotions. Through emotional wellness education, hands-on activities and tools kids can actually use, she built a program that encourages self-reflection, healthy communication and confidence in saying how you feel. Her Feelings Forecast gives children a simple, weather-themed way to identify where they are that day and choose a positive way to handle it.
Over many months she researched emotional literacy, worked alongside local educators and led workshops to bring the project to life. The materials she designed will keep being used by youth groups and classrooms, so the work carries on well past the award itself.
She worked incredibly hard on it, having already completed both her Bronze and Silver Awards.
Her troop and her family are proud of her leadership, creativity and compassion — the same qualities that shaped both the project and her path to the Gold Award. Tenaya's work reflects the core mission of Girl Scouting: empowering young women to make the world a better place.
As she looks ahead to what comes next, Tenaya carries forward the skills the Gold Award strengthened in her — confidence, empathy and a commitment to helping others thrive. Once a Girl Scout, Always a Girl Scout!
