Scout earns Gold Award with toy drive, cabinets

Hoanzl won the award, which is the highest honor granted by the Girl Scouts organization, by organizing a toy drive and building toy cabinets for an outreach program at Prince of Peace Community Church.

“Basically, I got the idea from one of the other girls in my troop because she goes to the church for the outreach ministry,” Hoanzl said. “When the families are on a wait to get help or anything like that, the kids can play with the toys for a few hours.”

Hoanzl could not have done it all on her own, however, and she used the project as an opportunity to recruit other volunteers into the mix while learning new skills in the process. Whenever she ran into a task she lacked the experience to do, she called in the experts.

“Since I had to use power tools, I had one of the contractors come to my house, and he helped me build it using some of my dad’s tools,” Hoanzl said. “After that, I had some people come over from my family, and they put different color handprints all over the chest.”

Hoanzl had previously won the Bronze and Silver Awards, along with the rest of her troop, by organizing pet food drives for local animals and making blankets to give to area hospitals. Although these are group honors, as opposed to the individual effort required of the Gold Award, Hoanzl credits those experiences for helping her through the final process.

“(Earning the Gold Award) teaches you a lot of leadership, a lot of responsibility, but the Bronze and the Silver helped me get into it,” Hoanzl said.

Now that she has reached the top level that the Girl Scouts have to offer, Hoanzl wants to continue to focus on her career pursuit of becoming an elementary school teacher.

“I have a job where I work with kids,” Hoanzl said. “I’m a senior in school, so I’m kind of consumed with that. Sometimes I like to go out and do some community service with (Northwest Assistance Ministries) or something like that.”

After graduating from high school, Hoanzl plans to first attend Lone Star College before transferring to Sam Houston State University to finish her degree in elementary education.

About Lauren Hoanzl
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Community Connection: Attends Klein High School
Fast Fact: Member of Klein yearbook staff

Chris Marshall is a freelance writer. He can be reached at neighborhoods@chron.com.