Page 4 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • April 11, 2012 Mahwah Mahwah High School junior Rebecca Damante recently earned her Girl Scout Gold Award. Her service project involved the creation of an instrument inventory program for school orchestras. The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn and requires the completion of a leadership project of at least 80 hours. Each candidate must discover an issue in the community, connect with experts and community members, and take action to effect positive change. The project should both reflect the girl’s passions and interests and fulfill a need in her community. Damante created a website with an inventory of all the music that local school orchestras had and the contact information for the schools’ music directors. “An orchestra cannot play all the music in their music library at once. So if a school wanted to work on a piece but did not have the funding to purchase the music, they Gold Award winner creates inventory for musicians can use my website to see which towns have the music and contact that school’s music director to borrow it,” Damante explained. With limited funding in schools for music programs, Damante seeks to save local orchestras money that can be used in other areas, such as repairing school instruments. “I selected this project because I play violin and I want people to be able to experience the joy I get from being in an orchestra,” she said. “I get to learn and play different styles and I really enjoy that aspect and I want other schools to be able to have a vast choice of music to play.” Damante’s website is up and running at https://sites. google.com/site/stringslibrary. The site currently has more than 1,000 titles that can be borrowed for full orchestras, string orchestras, and chamber ensembles. “I learned that I can do anything I set my mind to. Being a Girl Scout helped me learn about helping others and my Rebecca Damante community, and showed me the importance of setting goals and achieving them,” Damante said. At school, this award winner is a member of the orchestra, select strings ensemble, Chamber Voices, and T-bird Singers. She also participates in the Spanish Honors Society, Peer Advisor program, student council, Future Teachers Club, school newspaper, Principal’s Council, and Glamour Gals. After high school, she plans to continue playing music and singing. The Girl Scout Gold Award combines leadership development, career exploration, and community service. Within Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey, 12 percent of eligible girls earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, compared to the national average of six percent. Girl Scouts is the premier leadership development program for girls. In Girl Scouts, girls discover themselves, connect with others, and take action to create positive change in their own communities. Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey serves 20.5 percent of girls ages five through 17 in 160 municipalities including all of Bergen, Morris, Passaic, and Sussex counties and the northern half of Warren County. There are currently 34,399 girl members and 17,745 adult members. Options (continued from page 3) Councilwoman Lisa DiGiulio, who had been an emergency medical service volunteer for 10 years, disputed the mayor’s claim that there have been 600 missed calls during the past five years. She said no mayor has ever come to the council with that problem, and she asked the mayor to define what he means by a missed call. “We have not been involved in the discussion,” she asserted. Councilman Harry Williams also expressed skepticism about the mayor’s claim of missed calls. He said he has not seen the data that led to the mayor’s calculation of missed calls, and he asked that the data be provided before anything comes to the council for a vote. Council President John Spiech emphasized that all the information will come to the council and everyone on the council will have a chance to go through it. “No one wants to see the volunteer emergency services volunteers dispersed,” Spiech emphasized, “but just more response to emergency calls.” He added, “We need to step up the response time and somehow that isn’t happening, and the administration feels responsible.”