On Monday, Feb. 19, senior citizens gathered to watch Juliette Girl Scout Morgan Miller introduce an upgraded library at Brookdale Marlton Crossing, an assisted living center in Cherry Hill.
On Monday, Feb. 19, senior citizens gathered to watch Juliette Girl Scout Morgan Miller introduce an upgraded library at Brookdale Marlton Crossing, an assisted living center in Cherry Hill. This puts Morgan one step closer to achieving her Silver Award, which represents 50 hours of community service and is the highest award a sixth- through eighth-grader can earn, according to her mother, Maureen Miller.
Morgan began her journey with the Girl Scouts in first grade as an involved member of Troop 30325. The troop disbanded last June, which prompted her to become a Juliette Girl Scout, an independent Girl Scout who is not affiliated with a troop. Although Morgan achieves badges on her own, she still participates in activities with other girls through her Girl Scout council, according to Maureen.
As a seventh-grader from Rosa International Middle School, Morgan has immersed herself in helping those around her when she isn’t busy doing school work. Her passions include helping elders and younger kids. Morgan, also a certified babysitter, has an array of badges, with her favorite being a babysitting badge that consists of an eight-hour discussion in front of the Girl Scout council, according to Morgan.
One of Morgan’s solo missions, to help transform the library at Brookdale into an organized display of books, has had senior citizens there looking forward to using their freshly organized library with ease and convenience. Each genre is color coordinated and easily accessible to those interested in reading. She was determined to find a way to add more books to the library and organize the selection they had.
“I talked to them (the seniors) half way through to see what books and magazines they wanted, and a lot of them have been saying they have been reading books over and over again,” Morgan explained.
From June to December, Morgan helped upgrade the library by organizing the books by category, some of which include sports, history and short stories, and then used colored stickers to help seniors navigate through their favorite genres. In addition, Morgan held a garage sale where she used the money to get magazine subscriptions for the senior center. By utilizing social media, Morgan collected around 100 new books community members donated for the center.
The senior citizens at Brookdale were thrilled to have a library that is properly organized, especially Elizabeth McGlynn.
“It’s all in order now, which is good because I read consistently,” McGlynn said.
Another Brookdale senior citizen, Icaria Baker, echoed McGlynn’s thoughts on the library. She added that before Morgan came along to improve the library, everything was in a state of disorganization and the selection was older.
“I am an avid reader, and when I came here, the books were a little old,” Baker explained.
After Morgan’s efforts, she was elated to see she now had new books to look forward to.
Morgan’s passion for helping others and redoing the library at the senior home stems from her love of the elderly community.
“I really like elders so I wanted to do something involving them,” Morgan said.
In addition to helping the elderly, her relationship with Brookdale extends to her upbringing. Brookdale was chosen because she grew up playing bingo there with her Girl Scout troop and felt a special connection with the center.
Morgan’s Girl Scout sponsor was her grandmother, Carole Quinn, who was joyful to be able to see the progress Morgan made on the library. Although Quinn said her involvement was minimal, she was grateful to be a part of the process.
“I’m very proud of her,” Quinn said.
