HAND-WASHING STATION

In culmination of my rank of Eagle, I designed and led a team of Scouts and volunteers to construct a handwashing station in the learning garden of Armstrong Elementary in Dallas, Texas.  Previously, the school’s learning garden did not have adequate facilities for students and teachers to wash their hands in the garden, which led to the school’s bathrooms getting dirty from the dirt students tracked in. My project helped to mitigate this issue through the construction of a long-lasting, plumbed, garden handwashing station.  The station includes foot pedals to control the facets to help combat the spread of COVID-19 while keeping the station clean, and a small workstation was built on the backside for teachers to use as a prep station.  In addition to this much needed improvement to the teaching garden, my group of volunteers also re-stained the garden’s existing pergola and white-board frame, as well as adding more decomposed granite to the pathways.  In their effort to ‘leave things better than they found it,’ my team was also able to complete some garden cleanup and tidying, bury some exposed irrigation piping, and install a new garden sign to welcome the students back into the garden.