A Life-Changing Diagnosis
At six years old, when she was just a Daisy Girl Scout in kindergarten, Sabrina was diagnosed with Celiac disease. This chronic digestive and immune disorder is triggered by eating gluten. It causes damage to the small intestine and prevents the body from absorbing nutrients from food.
After her diagnosis, Sabrina had to make lifestyle changes and begin a gluten-free diet. This change was not easy. Sabrina’s mother began the laborious task of making gluten-free food, like bread, at home. At the time, Gluten-free options were not as common as they are today.
Turning a Diagnosis into Action
In 2006 at the age of nine, Sabrina attended Celiac Camp in Rhode Island. There, she experienced summer camp for the first time while meeting kids facing the same diagnosis who eventually became her lifelong friends. She continued to attend until 2014 when she aged out of the camp in her mid-teens.
After her time at Celiac Camp, Sabrina dreamed of creating a similar program for kids with celiac disease living in her local community and throughout Upstate New York. She wanted them to come together and have fun at summer camp without worrying about their diagnosis—just like she had.
When Sabrina began planning her Girl Scout Gold Award Take Action project, she knew what problem she wanted to tackle and how she could address it with an enduring initiative.
The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award that Seniors (grades 9-10) and Ambassadors (grades 11-12) in our Movement can earn. Gold Award recipients are rock stars, role models and real-life heroes who develop a Take Action project to solve a problem in their community or the world. Most notably, their plan must be sustainable and leave a lasting impact.
