One of my fondest memories as a child was the Brownie troop my mom led when I was a little girl and later on the Girl Scout camping trip at Camp Tanasi. Of course, when one says Girl Scouts who doesn’t think of Samoas or Thin Mints and sweet faces outside our local grocers enticing us to buy just one more box.
One of those sweet faces belong to Danielle Holbert, now 19, who has proudly been a Girl Scout since she was a 7-year-old Daisy. Danielle recently completed the premier final project of scouting, the Gold Award Project. According to the Girl Scouts’ website, the Gold Award Project must show that the scout has identified the root cause of a community issue she’s passionate about, an action she’s taken to address a real need that has long-term benefits and the project must be sustainable as well as involving other volunteers.
After three mission trips where Danielle witnessed the abject poverty of third world countries, she decided to tackle the issues in her home town. “I based my project on food scarcity. There is a large amount of homelessness in Knoxville, and that’s a problem.” We don’t have enough shelters, 38% can stay in shelters. The other 62% have nowhere to get food.”
Gary Holbert and Danielle Holbert with the Blessing Box
Danielle and her father, Gary Holbert, built a blessing box that gets filled weekly to help this problem. Her blessing box is located at Riverview Baptist Church in downtown Knoxville. Holbert wants her handbuilt wooden box to feed a lot of families and nearby homeless individuals.
She says, “From going on mission trips for three years to building my blessing box in my hometown is absolutely incredible. You can make a change; you just have to work for it.” If you want to donate to Danielle’s blessing box, contact her at danielleholbert39@gmail.com
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