Silver Award Girl Scout, Autumn Wellington

Autumn's Processing Boards

Autumn knows what anxiety and stress feel like and she knows what helps her deal with them. For her Silver Award project, Autumn learned that 20% of the kids at her middle school have special needs, including stress and anxiety disorders, and that there aren’t enough resources to help all of them. Autumn decided to create Processing Boards that would be available for students to use throughout her school whenever they were feeling anxious or stressed. Autumn worked with her guidance counselor, school principal, as well as other teachers, to determine what should go on the boards and where they should be placed.

The Processing Boards craeted by Autumn include items such as stress balls, note cards to write positive messages, fidget spinners, and other objects that help alleviate anxiety and stress. The boards also included instructions on how to use each object to lessen these feelings. Additionally, Autumn worked with the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, which agreed to maintain the boards, both financially and physically. She measured the impact her project was having by tracking the number of students that used the boards and then compared that with data she received from her Guidance Counselor regarding behaviors caused by stress and anxiety in students before and after using the boards.

Autumn’s project was so successful that other organizations reached out to her asking her to create additional Processing Boards for their patients and clients. Autumn says that she learned she can accomplish great things when she puts her mind to it and she advised other girls working on their Silver Award to ask for help and don’t give up.