Howland student to earn award for drug-addiction awareness campaign

Staff report

HOWLAND

Lindsey Shrodek, a Howland High School junior, will earn the Girl Scouts’ highest honor, called the Gold Award, for an awareness campaign she has carried out at school to help people cope with their challenges and avoid drug addiction.

During the school year, Shrodek set up informational booths at school events and sold rocks people could paint. She engaged people who visited the booth in conversation about drug addiction and treatment.

During her research, she learned some people with a drug addiction also struggle to cope with everyday life, one reason they use drugs. So she decided her Girl Scout project would be to educate and help people cope.

With the money she raised from the sale of the rocks, she purchased plants and statues with inspirational sayings for the Howland Hope Garden she created outside of the high-school gymnasium.

The garden contains the Promise Rocks others have created, lanterns to represent each of 11 Howland High School graduates who died due to drug overdoses in recent years and a mailbox with information about treatment services.

Shrodek’s goal was to do her part in hopes that the number of Howland graduates who have died from drug overdose will not increase. She will receive the Gold Award in June.