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Partly Cloudy Members of five Girl Scouts Troops collect four bags of trash at the LIRR station, and plant flowers
Seventeen Girl Scouts from five area troops joined forces on May 21 to work on an ambitious beautification project with the Baldwin Civic Association.
The scouts embarked on a cleanup behind the Long Island Rail Road station and its parking lot. The goal was to collect trash and make the area look more inviting for visitors and neighbors. Planters sit all along the municipal parking lot by the station, and the Girl Scouts were tasked with replanting them.
“The girls cleaned out the planters, replanted new flowers in the pots and then ‘adopted’ the pots,” said Jen Muschett, the service unit volunteer manager for the troops in Baldwin. “And so they’re doing a continual watering and maintaining throughout the rest of the season, as well as garbage pickups in the municipal parking lot along the back of the Long Island Rail Road station.”
According to Muschett, some troop members walked up and down the entire Brooklyn Avenue side of the LIRR tracks, with some of them picking up garbage by the planters themselves and filling four garbage bags.
“I was excited about this event,” Muschett said.
“I’m happy that we had a wide range of ages. We had girls as young as kindergarten, up through girls in seventh grade.”
Muschett said it was important to draw a wide age-range of girls to the clean up.
Some of the older girls were helping the younger girls with different tasks and activities, which, she said, is one of the main points of the Girl Scouts.
“The whole premise of Girl Scouts is teaching girls to be leaders and to empower them,” Muschett said.
“And the best way for them to do this is to work with each other. So the older girls at events like this one have an opportunity to be those role models to younger girls and show them how to act, how to coordinate and to teach them.”
Muschett also stressed the importance of keeping Baldwin clean for community members and visitors. She added that many people leave it to the town workers and sanitation crews to clean everything around them. Muschett said she wants people to take ownership of the trash they leave behind.
“If your own community doesn’t take pride and doesn’t take ownership of some of the trash, then how can you leave everybody else to clean up after you?” Muschett said.
“Planting a few flowers may not seem like a lot, but everybody who comes off the train gets to see all of this and you know what? A flower can put a smile on someone’s face and make their day.”
Along with planting the flowers, the girls decorated a garden pick that goes in the planter.
According to Muschett, some of the picks have a hedgehog on them or a snail and the Girl Scouts colored them in. Muschett said that in addition to the commuters coming off the train, these planters put a smile on the girls’ faces as well.
This year, the Girl Scouts’ goal is to partner with more community organizations, and Muschett said she hopes that, by doing this, the Girl Scouts take pride in the Baldwin community.
The May 21 event launched the Girl Scouts’ partnership with the Baldwin Civic Association.
Muschett said her job is to help manage, as well as “orchestrate” and coordinate, different activities for Baldwin’s 15 Girl Scout troops, which have a total of about 150 girls.
“It’s great that the Girl Scouts earn badges and it’s great that they go on trips and sell cookies, but the most important thing is having that community and that partnership with our area,” Muschett said.
