Members of a local Girl Scout troop recently completed their Silver Award project at Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary (SSBVM) Catholic School in Middletown. Students will be able to enjoy the Scouts' work for years to come.

The Scouts, led by troop leader Kay Livelsberger and mentor Angela Waner, SSBVM principal, installed five drums for the younger students to play with and painted multiplication tables in the outdoor recess lot.

Scouts who completed the project were Gwen Hoover and Kaylee Meisinger, students at Elizabethtown Area Middle School, and Trinity Garcia, Ava Livelsberger and Meadow May, students at Donegal Junior High School. The girls are members of Troop 71686, which meets at Conoy Brethren in Christ Church, Elizabethtown.

"The Girl Scouts did a great job. The drums are in our preschool Play Lab," noted Mindy Kennedy, SSBVM director of development, explaining that the Play Lab is an outdoor classroom used in early childhood education. "The multiplication table is on our recess lot. Kindergarten through eighth-grade students can access them during daily outdoor recess. Our teachers may also take their math lessons outside for games on the table."

Meadow explained that the Silver Award is the second-highest award in Girl Scouts. "Each girl must put in 50 hours," she said, noting that the Scouts completed a total of 251 hours working on the project.

The idea for the project originated with Ava, whose family members are parishioners at SSBVM Catholic Church. "Our troop leader told us to ask around in order to figure out what was (a need) in the community," said Meadow. "Ava asked the pastor and people at the church, and they said that that they needed the five musical drums to be put in. We came up with the multiplication tables."

The troop, along with help from family members, completed the project on weekends from April through August. "The school had the drums, and we had to put them in concrete," Meadow explained. "We had to raise the money, but we got a donation from Home Depot in Lancaster." JB Hostetter & Sons of Mount Joy donated the use of a cement mixer.

"The multiplication tables took the longest amount of time because we had to make sure the paint did not bleed and was not pigmented, so we had to go over it twice," Meadow said. "We could not use the stencils twice, so we had to make extras of each one and make sure the numbers did not bleed. The numbers had to be perfect."

The girls also installed the drums into cement. "Rainwater (filled the) part that was dug out, so we had to hand mix all the cement," Meadow added.

For their projects, the girls will be presented with a Silver Award pin for them to wear on the front of their vests. "The best part of the Silver Award is that you create something that keeps going on after the project," Meadow said.