Silver Award Girl Scout, Nora Spratt

Nora Spratt from Troop 1617 is passionate about the plight of the North Atlantic Right Whale. She is so interested in this topic that she is even a member of the Calvineers, a science based extracurricular activity for students in grades 6-8 that focuses on conserving this marine species through public education and outreach. When she decided to earn her Silver Award she knew she wanted to incorporate this passion and global issue into her award project.

Through research of other Right Whale advocacy groups and talking with people in the Calvineers, she discovered that the most effective way to get her message out would be to design and launch a website for the Calvineers, which would enable them to effectively communicate with the public on a more global scale. She worked with her Project Advisor, a professional website designer, to construct a functional website that allows the group to continuously publish updated information about the Right Whale’s plight and allows for communication and interaction with the public. Nora ensured the sustainability of her website by using a platform that was “easy to use and intuitive so that it wouldn’t be difficult for others to manage the site.” In addition, she created a manual on how to update and maintain the site so that other Calvineer members can update it.

So, how did Nora determine if her project was a success? She tracked the interactions between the Calvineers and outside users of the site as well as analyzed her websites' ability to perform its goals. Through her project, Nora learned a lot about website design, coding, and most importantly that the “North Atlantic Right Whale’s endangerment does not have a single solution. The solution will come from many different people with different perspectives and opinions. The effort to save the North Atlantic Right Whale is going to take compromises from a lot of different people and needs to be realistic and fair for both the ocean environment and economy to survive.”

Nora is most excited about the number of interactions she’s had with her website and her advice to others earning their Silver Award is: “try something new that you’ve never done before or don’t have much experience with. This project was a great opportunity to widen my skill set.”