Southington Girl Scout Takes on Childhood Obesity

When 15-year-old Ariel Perry had to come up with a community service project to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award, she decided on developing a campaign to help local youngsters at the Margaret Griffin Day Care Center housed at Derynoski School in Southington.

She knew what her project would be after discovering that some of the children were showing up for daycare with cookies for breakfast and lunch because cookies are cheaper than fruits and vegetables.

For her project she is educating little ones, ages 3 and 4, how to live a healthy life style and to fight childhood obesity. She is teaching them how to exercise, eat healthy, and how to garden. She also collaborated with the JFK Middle School Peer Advocates to collect food items, decorate the bags, and to help make an exercise video. 

Active with the Girl Scouts for 10 years, Ariel raised money on her own from babysitting to purchase a bag of healthy food and seeds for the kids to grow their own gardens. She has made a bag for each of the 46 children and their families. She also persuaded Stop and Shop to donate the actual bags and Lowe's Home Improvement to give her a 20 percent discount on the flowers. She purchased more than 300 cans of food and about 100 packets of seeds.

The culmination of Ariel's work — for the award that's equivalent to the Boy Scout Eagle Award — is Thursday afternoon when she delivers the bags at the center.