By Gail Peckler-Dziki~Correspondent
Troop 7346 out of Lakewood Elementary School has helped the Easter Bunny with baskets for the children at The Sharing Center for the past two years. Troop leader Mindy Vinson hatched the idea and this year, director of The Sharing Center, Sharon Pomaville, took a larger view.
“When they asked me how many baskets we would like this year, I said 200. The past two years we received 40,” Pomaville said. “Before school this year, we gave out 300 backpacks filled with school supplies, but that number included high School students. The Easter basket project doesn’t.”
The girl scouts were at the ready and decided to enlist all troops in the area. According to Karen Bremer from the Lakewood Troop, “Our Girl Scout Service area includes Girl Scouts in all of our local schools including Wheatland, Lakewood, Randall, Salem, Trevor, Riverview and Bristol. Our current roster puts us just over 300 girls.
“We have set an area goal to provide 200 baskets with each troop/school handling how they want to acquire donations,” Bremer continued. “Our particular troop has reached out to all students and their parents of Lakewood Elementary for donations. I have also started to acquire donations via my co-workers at my place of employment.”
The Girl Scouts and their families will meet on February 26 at the Sharing Center to put the Easter baskets together using the donations.
Bremer said, “We are all very excited to see how many people will participate and ultimately how many baskets we are able to provide. We also discussed how Girl Scouts could help to obtain other items needed by the community in the future with something like the backpack and school supply program