We are eighth graders in Girl Scout Troop 68137 from Medford working on our Silver Award project. The Silver Award is a leadership award, centered around tackling an issue in your community, and is the highest honor a Cadette can achieve. Girls seeking the Silver Award need to identify an issue in their community, choose a project that helps address that issue, and complete a minimum of 50 hours of work towards their project. For our Silver Award project, we are partnering with the City of Medford and Trees Medford to roll out an adopt-a-tree program in Medford as well as educate the community about the importance of trees.
Medford’s Urban Canopy is Shrinking
The urban canopy in Medford is shrinking. While the city is trying to rebuild the canopy by planting new trees along streets and in parks, it doesn’t have the resources to water all of the new trees it plants. A newly planted tree requires 10-14 gallons of water per week from May through October in order to survive and thrive in its first three years. Without sufficient water, newly planted trees in Medford will struggle to establish their root systems and may die.
Why are Urban Trees Important?
Building a healthy urban canopy is important for many reasons. Urban trees help cities adapt to climate change. In the summer, trees shade and cool the air around buildings, reducing dependence on air conditioning. In the winter, trees help reduce wind speeds and keep nearby buildings warmer. Trees remove greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, from the air and replenish it with oxygen for us to breathe. Trees also provide many health benefits, improving air quality by capturing dust and pollution particles from dirty city air that can affect human health. Trees bring natural elements and wildlife into urban environments, increasing the quality of life for residents. The more trees and grass in the common spaces of city neighborhoods, the more those spaces are used by residents. This results in more social activities, more knowledge about neighbors, stronger feelings of belonging and the kind of positive social ties that are the very fabric of a healthy neighborhood. Studies have even shown that hospital patients recover from surgery more quickly and require less pain medication when their room has a window that provides a view of trees!
The Adopt-a-Tree Program
The goal of Medford’s adopt-a-tree program is to help ensure that newly-planted city trees in Medford survive and thrive. Through the program, a volunteer pledges to water a tree during its first three years of life so it can grow into a healthy, mature tree.
To promote the new adopt-a-tree program, our team designed a web page on the TreesMedford site detailing the program and providing a webform to sign up to adopt a tree. We created an online map of all trees planted in Medford between 2017 and 2020 to help potential volunteers identify trees near them that are in need of water. We developed an educational workshop about the benefits of trees, and presented to several Girl Scout troops in Medford. We tagged dozens of newly-planted trees with “A New Tree Needs Water” tags encouraging neighbors to adopt the tree. We designed and printed a “This Tree Has Been Adopted” tag and have tagged all of the trees that have already been adopted. We are now working to advertise the Adopt-a-Tree program more broadly and recruit volunteers through flyers and social media.
How You Can Help
If you would like to support our project, and in turn support the environment, we would appreciate if you could adopt a tree! As a volunteer, you would nurture your tree by providing 10 -14 gallons of water each week between the months of May and October. Visit the TreesMedford Adopt-a-Tree page to learn more about the program, see the map of trees needing adoption, and sign-up to water a tree.
Thank you for your support! Claire, Ciara & Merbens – Troop 68137
Members of Girl Scouts Junior Troop 67712 and Cadette Troop 72102 from the Brooks School, Andrews Middle School and McGlynn Middle School, all in Medford, Massachusetts, honored the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and learned about the Civil Rights Movement during an overnight winter lodge camping experience on Sunday, January 19 – Monday, January 20, 2020. Troop leaders Tracy Keene, Diane Cervati, Patricia Wheeler, Veronica Hunt and Paul Ruseau, also a member of the Medford School Committee, organized this troop outing at the GSEMA Camp Runels in Pelham, New Hampshire as a learning and service experience.
In addition to learning about civil rights, the troops participated in projects for the MLK Day of Service. They made pine cone bird feeders to hang around the snow-covered campsite. They also sorted and assembled care packages for the unhoused community. The troops are partnering with Ari Barbanell, Medford Resident and the Executive Director of the Winter Walk, to see that the care packages are distributed to members of our community who have found themselves without shelter during these winter months. Winter Walk is an initiative to raise funds and awareness about homelessness and will be held February 9 in Copley Square.
Medford Girl Scouts deeply appreciates the special partnership it has with the 
Disney on Ice – Follow Your Heart – Friday, Nov. 4 at the DCU Center in Worcester. Tickets for Girl Scouts and their family and friends are $17. Fun patch included. 
Annie the Musical – May 11, 2017. Special Q&A for Girl Scouts at 5pm, show starts at 7pm. Wear your uniform to the show. Annie patches will be available for purchase. 
The girls from Troop 72096, who just completed first grade, gathered together on Saturday, July 16, with several master gardeners at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford to conclude their Daisy year with a Take Action project: the release of almost 20 ladybugs. These small insects are formidable fighters and eat aphids, tiny bugs that afflict vegetable gardens. Controlling aphids is especially important because the food grown at the church is donated directly to the Community Cupboard food pantry. Fewer aphids will equal healthier plants, which will mean more food for the 7090 families that rely on the pantry each week.
The Daisy Girl Scouts spent the past few months learning about gardens. They planted and tended snow peas and beets at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, which were all donated to the food pantry. Through this work, the girls learned about what gardens need to stay healthy.
The girls very much enjoyed working with the Master Gardeners to contribute to this local food pantry and they eagerly look forward to the projects they may take on as Brownies this coming school year!
Journey with JFK – the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Patch: This patch is open to all levels and it offers girls a variety of different activities, puzzles, worksheets, and games, some of which they can do at home and some which require them to go to the JFK Museum in Boston. 
Fetch! Patch: PBS’s TV show “Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman” teaches kids to explore the world and try new things. Brownies and Juniors can earn this patch by completing science and engineering activities, and then demonstrating what they have learned to younger kids (like Girl Scout Daisies, for example.) 
Plimoth Plantation Patch: Brownies and Juniors can earn this patch by visiting the Plimoth Plantation and learning about the history of the relationship between the Native Wampanoag people and the 17th-century colonists. 
Medford Girl Scouts 