Elizabeth Oakley of Rehoboth Receives Girl Scout Gold Award

Elizabeth’s project, a Chimney Swift Tower, was designed to provide a new home for the chimney swifts which nested in the Carpenter Museum chimney for many years.”

Elizabeth Oakley of Girl Scout Troop 507 in Rehoboth received the Girl Scout Gold Award on August 6, 2015 in a ceremony at the Carpenter Museum. Elizabeth has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten, and counts the girls in her troop among her closest friends; as part of the ceremony, they read her the Gold Award Challenge.

The Gold Award is the highest award in Girl Scouting and is earned by a small percentage of Scouts. Fulfilling the requirements for this award begins with completing two Girl Scout Senior or Ambassador Journeys. With each Journey, a girl explores a subject in depth, challenging herself to develop the skills needed to plan and implement a project that will have an impact on her community.

The Gold Award project requires the Girl Scout to spend a minimum of 80 hours identifying an issue important to her, investigating it thoroughly, creating a plan and presenting it for approval, building a team to work with, taking action, and educating and inspiring others. The project must have a measurable and sustainable impact and provide a benefit to the community.

Elizabeth’s project, a Chimney Swift Tower, was designed to provide a new home for the chimney swifts which nested in the Carpenter Museum chimney for many years. Chimney swifts are native birds which eat insects and nest in hollow trees and chimneys. As a Museum volunteer, Elizabeth was aware that the Museum chimney was going to be capped, and as an animal lover, she wanted to make sure the birds had somewhere else to go. After researching the possibilities and assembling a support team, she designed and built an imitation chimney for the swifts. The swifts need to be able to fly straight down into the tower, so the tower has a square hole in the top and eleven feet of vertical space. The inside of the tower is made of rough plywood with horizontal grooves, so that the swifts can grip it with their claws and attach their nests to it. This is the first chimney swift tower built in Rehoboth.

Elizabeth is the daughter of Rebecca H. Smith and Dr. Bernard Oakley of Rehoboth. A lifelong Rehoboth resident, she graduated from D-R in 2014 and completed her project that summer. She is currently a student at Colby College, where she plans to major in Environmental Science.