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Pleasanton resident Juliana Gerard has been honored with the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest recognition in Girl Scouting.
Her Gold Award project was creating Student Mentoring and Interactive Learning Exchange (SMILE), as a way for high school student volunteers to teach elementary students about social issues while the teens learn lasting leadership skills.
Gerard founded SMILE in 2019 as a club at her school, the Quarry Lane School in Dublin. She obtained approval to operate the club, recruited a team of volunteer mentors and developed curriculum for 28 workshops focused on a range of topics, including environmental awareness, wildlife conservation and mental health.
She served as the club’s president, coordinating with school administrators, training volunteers, and leading the workshops with students split into groups of kindergartners to second-graders and third- to fifth-graders.
In addition to running SMILE, Gerard documented project materials and recruited a team of student leaders to continue operating the club after she graduated in 2020. The new team of student leaders adapted the program to enable workshops even while students and volunteers engaged remotely during the 2020-21 school year.
Gerard, the daughter of Jack and Carrie Gerard of Pleasanton, was in Girl Scouts for 13 years and volunteers as a counselor at Two Sentinels Girl Scout Camp. She recently completed her first year of college at UCLA.
