Oradell Girl Scouts Collect for Habitat to Work Toward Silver Award

Anna Epstein and Faith Sahagian of Girl Scout Troop 1475 have collected food donations for the four Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County families moving into their new homes in Oradell. The girls’ collections are being counted toward achieving their Girl Scout Silver Award, which is the highest award a Girl Scout Cadette can earn. Achieving the Silver Award includes the development of a project based on an issue the girl scout cares about and putting it into action in the local community.

For this project specifically, Anna and Faith collected non-perishable items from shoppers at the Whole Foods Market at the Bergen Town Center in Paramus for two Sundays. At the collection table, which the girls outfitted with Habitat Bergen signage and flyers, they informed patrons that the donations would go to Habitat Bergen families. The girls provided each patron with a shopping list of acceptable items to be donated including non-perishable foods, paper products and cleaning supplies. Over the course of two Sundays, the girls collected over one hundred bags of donations. 

Habitat Bergen’s Executive Director, Jacey Raimondo, was thrilled by the amount of donations that the girls collected. 

“Anna and Faith have surpassed our expectations with the amount of food and supplies they have collected. The Habitat Bergen families will be so happy to see that this is all for them,” Raimondo said. 

Both girl scouts agreed that they enjoyed their volunteering experience. “Seeing the joy on the faces of the new homeowners was so exciting,” Epstein said. Sahagian added, “It was the best part of the whole experience.”

The donations that Faith and Anna collected were presented to the Habitat Bergen families at the Oradell Home Dedications, which took place on Saturday, September 28, 2013 in Oradell, New Jersey.                

For more information about Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County or the Oradell Home Dedications, contact Nicole Murray at nicolem@habitatbergen.org, or call 201.457.1020.