Black belt taekwondo girl scout creates self-defense badge

Girl Scouts builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. The Girl Scout Gold Award is the pinnacle of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience, and it’s available exclusively to Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors (9-12 grade). Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama (GSSA) would like to recognize Ellie Stevens for receiving the Gold Award.

Through the Gold Award, girls engage in a rigorous leadership process, as they tackle issues they’re passionate about to create long-term, sustainable change. To earn the Gold Award, girls typically spend one to two years exploring the root cause of a local or global issue and partner with the community to create lasting solutions.

For Ellie’s project, she created a self-defense patch to help every girl learn how to protect themselves against attackers through three basic steps. In this program, Ellie challenges girls to research, learn, and develop self-defense skills through a series of classes and videos that she designed. In these videos, Ellie teaches girls tactical ways how to defend themselves if they get attacked. Ellie has a black belt in taekwondo and believes that “every girl should learn how to protect herself against an assault.” She says that “knowing how to defend yourself can boost your confidence, and more importantly, save your life.” Once girls have completed this patch, they will feel confident in their self-defense skills and be educated on protecting themselves in case of an attack.

Ellie has earned all of the Girl Scout Highest Awards- the Silver, Bronze, and Gold Awards throughout her Girl Scout career. She says that earning the Gold Award has made her feel “more confident in [herself] and when speaking to other people.” Ellie will graduate from Montgomery Academy in 2022.