Washougal Girl Scout earns Gold Award for project helping Ugandan women and girls

Buggy Eakin has always been a traveler at heart.

When she was just 8 months old, her parents took her to the Netherlands. During her youth, Eakin visited several countries with Washougal’s Girl Scout Troop 45703.

“All of the volunteering and the travel that I’ve done definitely made me want to go places,” said Eakin, a 2024 Washougal High School graduate, adding that she believes that “to help others, you need to be able to travel and see the world.”

For her final Girl Scout project, she created 1,000 washable and reusable menstruation pads that are now headed to Ugandan villages. Eakin wanted to do something that would help her earn the Girl Scouts’ highest achievement, the Gold Award, while also benefiting girls and women on the other side of the world.

“I chose this project because in America we’re so privileged. We have our periods, we can go out, we can go to work, we can do everything,” Eakin said. “A lot of the girls in Uganda, they can’t go to school if they’re on their period. They have to stay home because there’s nothing to do about it, so they just sit at home and bleed.”

Eakin said she hopes her project will help at least a few Ugandan girls have a better life.

“I wanted to help them go to school and get an education and be successful,” she said.

According to the national Girls Scouts of the USA organization, fewer than 6 percent of eligible Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award, a recognition of a Girl Scout who has, according to a news release, taken “the lead in designing and enacting a plan for change, providing innovative solutions to address issues in their community and beyond.”

Eakin said the award was meaningful.

“I just feel so accomplished,” she said. “I did something that also creates an impact.”

Eakin worked in collaboration with OurGanda, a Vancouver nonprofit organization that serves the medical, social and spiritual needs of people who live in the Bundibugyo District of western Uganda.

During her talks with OurGanda, the organization’s leaders told Eakin they needed reusable menstrual pads because a trash collection crisis in Uganda has made it nearly impossible for some people to easily get rid of the typical disposable pads used around the world.

According to The Borgen Project, a nonprofit that works to fight extreme poverty, trash in Uganda “has been piling up for years in areas where waste management has been a struggle for locals.”

Eakin recruited nearly a dozen friends, Girl Scouts and adult mentors who volunteered to help make the reusable pads. The group gathered at sewing parties and used materials purchased with some of the money Eakin had earned selling Girl Scout cookies, as well as donations from Washougal-area businesses and community members.

“I had to find a pattern first. We went through a lot of different patterns, and then we found a really good one and cut the fabric into the pattern,” Eakin said. “We (covered) the fabric with some waterproof material and pieces of fleece, like a sandwich.”

Then the group placed five reusable pads in handmade bags. The group also discussed and documented the history of feminine hygiene products, chemicals, risks associated with disposable menstrual products and the stigma around periods. They worked on the project for a little more than one year and finished making 1,000 reusable pads in September 2024.

Eakin had planned to deliver the pads to Africa, but was working for AmeriCorps and could not take two weeks off. Instead, she placed the finished pads in suitcases and gave them to the OurGanda organizer, who brought them to Uganda for distribution.

In a project report, Eakin wrote that, although she enjoys helping others, the project taught her that she does not enjoy sewing.

“I learned to appreciate the help of others and realized that, while I am responsible for my success or failure, it is important to have supporters along the way,” Eakin said in her project report.

Eakin joined AmeriCorps after graduating from high school and currently works for a nonprofit day care center in Colorado. She plans to return to Washougal this summer to save some money before heading south to volunteer at a Girl Scout World Center in Mexico. Eakin also hopes to join the Peace Corps.

And she’ll be doing all of her traveling in the school bus that she recently purchased.

“I’ve always wanted to live in a bus,” she said. “I bought it on Facebook Marketplace. It’s a pink ‘skoolie,’ and it was already renovated, so I’ll be living in it.”

Eakin said she loves the idea of never having to stay in one spot and is looking forward to living life on the road, “being able to go wherever I want, when I want.”

Washougal Girl Scout troop leader Tammy Mackey said Eakin, who joined the Washougal troop when she was 5 years old, possesses a strong sense of self, empathy, a sense of adventure, an “intense-at-times” personality, and a desire to advocate for marginalized and underrepresented communities.

“To watch (Eakin) grow into the young woman she is today has been quite the adventure,” Mackey said. “She is definitely a woman of courage, confidence and character. Of all of my Girl Scouts, I have no doubt (she) will continue to cause others to shake their heads in bewilderment as she lives life to the fullest, breaking barriers and doing exactly as she pleases with little concern for the ‘tsk-tsking’ of others.”

Doug Flanagan: 360-735-4669, [email protected]