Efforts by two Girl Scouts from Troop 6920 to earn their Silver Awards benefited Cove House at a Christmas event last week. Laurel Weeks, 14, and Kelsey Wheadon, 13, decorated wreaths, filled 30 Christmas stockings with gifts and supplies, collected food and toy donations and baked cookies to share holiday cheer with residents of Cove House, an emergency homeless shelter at 108 E. Halstead Ave. “We were thinking about doing something for the animal shelter, but when we saw the bare pantries here, we decided to help them,” said Laurel Weeks. On Dec. 16, Cove House residents experienced the girls’ efforts as they filtered in and out of the shelter’s main office. There, they munched on cookies, admired the stockings, and chatted with Cove House employees and volunteers. Ingrid Weeks, Laurel’s mother, offered residents a choice of drinks. “Even adults need a juice box sometimes,” she said. The Silver Award is the highest award a Girl Scout Cadette can earn, according to information on www.girlscouts.org. It requires 40 hours of work on a service project to benefit the local community. “The shopping took the longest,” said Weeks. “We only stopped long enough to eat, but we shopped one day from 3:15 to 10:15.” The Girl Scouts sought and received donations from their service unit, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, Subway, Schlotzsky’s and Walgreens. Their efforts were appreciated. “I love it; it’s great to support the kids in what they do,” said Bennie Goodson, a Kansas City, Mo., native who had been boarding at Cove House for a week at the time of the Christmas event. “I love it because it shows somebody cares. People don’t care about each other anymore. … These girls are learning to be good citizens.” The number of residents at Cove House fluctuates, as it has a general two-week limit on how long people are allowed to stay, but the four residents at the time of the event, including a child, benefited from the work of the Girl Scouts. Laurel Weeks and Kelsey left enough stockings for Cove House to share with future residents and a few more pounds of food to add to the facility’s food bank. “It’s a blessing to our residents and individuals we can give them to,” said Ben Tindall, director of Cove House. “It’s what we anticipated and more.” Contact Audrey Spencer at aspencer@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7476.
Original article may be found at http://kdhnews.com/copperas_cove/local/some-holiday-help-for-cove-homeless/article_408c4e36-c75e-552f-ad3c-ff3b38cfa0f2.html