4S Ranch Girl Scouts make comfort carts to earn Silver Award

Seniors experiencing memory issues and families of patients in intensive care now have free resources to help them thanks to Cadette Girl Scouts in 4S Ranch.

Eight members of Troop 2213 worked in teams of four to create comfort carts as their Silver Award projects.

The Silver Award is the second-highest honor a Girl Scout can earn and the highest recognition at the Cadette level.

Cadettes Arnavi Bathija, Annalise Menezes, Meera Shyamal and Zarina Uzakova created a cart for the 4S ActivCare Memory Center, while Cadettes Amelia Garcia, Kiley Hammer, Amita Mistry and Sonya Mistry created one for the ICU at Palomar Medical Center Escondido.

The memory center’s cart was filled with items such as markers, colored pencils and coloring books to help residents work on their hand-eye coordination; along with puzzles and puzzle-like sensory items that engage all the parts of the residents’ brains, said Arnavi Bathija, 12, a seventh-grader at Oak Valley Middle School.

“I knew I wanted to serve the community in some way and when we visited the senior living center we saw they did not have enough things to stimulate their brains and stay engaged throughout the day,” Arnavi said. “So the idea of the comfort station was to give them books, games and puzzles to help stimulate their brains.”

She said staff members gave the girls suggestions on the best items to purchase for the carts. The troop has frequently visited the center to deliver holiday cards and sing to residents.

Amita Mistry said she came up with the idea for the cart at Palomar Medica Center’s intensive care unit when her grandfather was hospitalized.

“I noticed there was a need for families taking care of loved ones in the ICU, that they also needed to take care of themselves,” Amita said.

The cart includes free hygiene items such as toothbrushes and toothpaste, lotions and deodorant, along with journals and pens so families could have a way to take notes when meeting with medical staff, she said.

“We reached out to the hospital and talked with nurses about what they thought would be the most beneficial items in the cart,” said Amita, 14, a freshman at Del Norte High School.

To fund their project, the troop created a GoFundMe page to raise $300 for each cart. The money went toward the purchase of the carts that they assembled and all the supplies.

One of the Silver Award’s requirements is for the project to be sustainable. To do this, they created QR codes that link to Amazon wish lists, said troop leader Gunmit Mistry. While the items are free, the scouts said they hope the families of patients at both facilities will purchase something on the lists in a pay-it-forward fashion.

Any items purchased will be sent directly to the hospital and memory center so staff can resupply them.

It took the Cadettes eight months — from October 2024 to June 2025 — to complete their projects, which required about 50 hours of work, They were sixth- and eighth-graders at the time.

Girl Scouts San Diego holds an annual councilwide Silver Award ceremony, so the girls will receive the award next spring. But they have already been told their work has been approved, she said.

Mistry said their projects demonstrate to the community the girls’ leadership and service to others and that even at a young age they can make a lasting difference.

“This project showed me that little things can really help others and even though you are young, if you see an issue, you can put in the effort to fix it,” Amita said.

Amita, who joined Girl Scouts as a Daisy in kindergarten, said working toward the Silver Award with her fellow troop members, including her 12-year-old sister, Sonya Mistry, was especially fun.

Arnavi, who joined Girl Scouts three years ago as a Brownie, said earning the Silver Award gave her “a lot of satisfaction because I was able to help the community in a good way and we were able to help people who really need it.”