Girl Scouts take action to help their neighbors

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Glen Ridge Girl Scout Troop 21265 is accustomed to performing many community-service projects each year. This year, the 11- and 12-year-old Junior Girl Scouts are “taking action” on a much bigger project and calling on the community to help in their donation drive that will benefit local children in need.

For the past four years, Troop 21265 has called on Van Dyk Manor Nursing home in Montclair to help carve pumpkins for its annual Halloween party, as well as to sing Christmas carols to the residents during the holiday season. They have also gone there just to play games and connect with the elderly residents.

Some of the other community service projects in which the troop has participated are planting bulbs at Glen Ridge Freeman Gardens, as well as packing backpacks for the homeless and displaced at Toni’s Kitchen in Montclair.

“The most important thing we want to teach our girls is how necessary it is to give back to the community,” said co-leader Christi Johnson.

This spring, the troop is taking on their most challenging project to date, in preparation for their Silver Awards that they will be earning next year. They are working with the Department of Child Protection and Permanency, formerly known as DYFS, in Newark, and hoping to spruce up the visitation rooms used by foster children when visiting family members. In order to do this, they will be soliciting many different retail companies for new and appropriate furniture and decor items for the rooms. They also have launched a donation drive to collect new books, games and toys, appropriate for ages 2 to 16, for the foster children to use during visitations. The troop hopes to finish the project by this coming June.

Troop 21265 hopes that the community will come together, as they have in the past, to help our local children in need. Donations are currently being collected until the end of March in various locations in the area. Contributions of new toys, books, or games may be left at the following locations: The Glen Ridge Public Library, Boiling Springs Bank in Glen Ridge, and in the Union Congregational Church Assembly Room in Upper Montclair.