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The Town of Westwood values and seeks to recognize the diversity of our community. Please email westwoodwire@westwoodma.gov, with any suggestions for these monthly highlights.
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Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, trash and recycling collection will be delayed by one day. Thursday’s collection will occur on Friday, and Friday’s collection will take place on Saturday. |
The Girl Scouts of Westwood congratulates its Silver Award recipients from troops 62276 and 62277. The Silver Award is the second-highest national Girl Scout honor. Members from both troops collaborated to identify two community challenges and create projects to address their concerns and lead to sustainable change. From January to September, each team member contributed around 50 hours towards their projects. The Girl Scouts of Westwood recognized and celebrated the teams’ amazing accomplishments at the annual bridging ceremony held in September. Their projects are described below.
Sophia Quatroche, Amira Shanshiry, Manjula Viswalingam, and others focused on improving literacy rates for elementary-aged children from low-income families in Westwood. To address this concern and support children’s reading outside of school, they organized a free summer book group at the Westwood Public Library, where they read stories to children and created activities to reinforce comprehension. They also hosted a spring book drive at Martha Jones Elementary School. Due to the overwhelming generosity of the Westwood community, the team received and donated more than 900 books! At the project’s end, the team created an educational video to inspire others to improve literacy in their communities.
Rayna Álvarez, Aviv Berger, and Sarah Hutchison focused their attention on the mental health of young adults ages 15-25 years old—specifically about how those suffering from suicidal thoughts and self-harm should be more mindful of firearms. During their research, the team learned the following information: In 2023, roughly 50,000 Americans died from suicide, which is the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 15-25 years old. In addition, firearm safety laws in New England and many other parts of America are insufficient in protecting citizens from the dangers of guns and other firearms.
To spread awareness about this concern, they created informational posters and brochures with advice, resources and information about suicide prevention, firearm safety, and testimonials from people who have struggled with suicidal attempts and their decisions to either not own or return firearms. The team partnered with the Westwood Police Department, which provided information on the laws that help people with mental health challenges and what to expect if you surrender a firearm, and the MA chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), which provided specific project-related details and statistics. The team then distributed these to schools, clinics, therapists, guidance counselors and first responders.
For more information on these projects, please contact the following Girl Scout adult volunteers: Karyn Morrison (karynmorrison@yahoo.com), Lisa Quatroche (lhoder6@aol.com), and Rachel Shanshiry (rshanshiry@gmail.com).
Adapted from a press release submitted by A. Amatangelo.
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