Girl Scout Earns Gold Award for Pollinator House Project

By SARAH ROBERTS
ONEONTA

Skylar Gargash, a 2025 Oneonta High School graduate and fourth-generation beekeeper from Girl Scout Troop 30043, has earned the prestigious Girl Scout Gold Award for her “Take Action” project, “Pollinator Power,” which promotes awareness of pollinator habitat loss and the creation of pollinator houses for community use.

As a beekeeper, Gargash said she has been concerned about the declining pollinator populations in recent years. Through various tabling events and seminars, she has spread awareness about the issues of declining pollinator populations and provided handouts on how to build and maintain pollinator houses— structures which accommodate solitary-nesting native bees by providing cavities in natural materials for them to live in.

She also hand-built wooden frames and led workshops on how to fill the frames with natural nesting. Workshop participants were able to take their pollinator houses home, along with instructions on how to maintain them for use year after year.

Throughout the program, more than 100 pollinator houses have been built. In addition to those sent home with workshop participants, Gargash donated several pollinator houses to community gardens, as well as to local farms and garden centers.

As she wrapped up her project, Gargash was asked to lead a workshop at Girl Scout Camp Amahami’s Encampment Weekend this past April. During Encampment Weekend, many Girl Scout troops—from the youngest “Daisies” (kindergarten and first grade) through the highest-level “Ambassadors” (11th and 12th grades)—join together for camping activities and other shared experiences.

Prior to her Encampment Weekend presentation, Gargash said she was excited to be able to share her project with fellow Girl Scouts and that she hoped to inspire the younger generation of Scouts to continue through the Ambassador level and complete their own Gold Award projects.

Gargash donated a pollinator house to Camp Amahami, so her Gold Award project will be a permanent part of the camp she has enjoyed attending annually during her 13 years of scouting.

To ensure that her project continues on, Gargash has created education kits for use in programs at Oneonta World of Learning and Huntington Memorial Library. These kits include information on the importance of pollinators, instructions on how to build pollinator houses and fun related activities.

More information on Gargash’s “Pollinator Power” project and instructions on how to build and maintain a pollinator house can be found on her webpage, https://sites.google.com/view/pollinatorproject.