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GIRL SCOUTS GIVE BACK AT HALLOWEEN
By Kim Fink
 | | --Photo By Kim Fink Gearing up for some fun trick or treating, students from Mrs. LaBarr's kindergarten class at Manchester Township Elementary School show off their finest Halloween costume. |
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Christmas has always been referred to as the "season of giving" but some area Girl Scouts believe there is no reason to wait until December. Daisy Troop 8 and Brownie Troop 601 of Manchester believe that Halloween is the perfect time to start helping others, so they found a way to insure that all area children were able to celebrate the deliciously creepy holiday.
Troop leader Kathleen Statile said she was very proud of what the girls did to help those less fortunate.
"We ran a month long costume drive and took donations of new and gently used costumes so that the United Way could distribute them to needy families in the area," said Statile. "The girls did great."
The girls, ages 5 through 8, gave some of their own costumes, collected them from friends or asked for help from local businesses in order to bring some new costumes to the project.
Project leader and community building coordinator of United Way of Ocean County Lisa Petruzzello said she was hoping to reach her goal of 1,000 costumes this year because the demand was so high. With the help from local organizations, churches, schools and of course Girl Scouts, Petruzzello believes she exceeded her goal.
"We had so many people drop off bags and bags of costumes that we didn't even know they were collecting," she said. "Many organizations took it upon themselves to help out without even contacting us, and then just showed up with loads of costumes. It's been unbelievable. We couldn't be happier with the response we got."
One Daisy Scout said she was shocked when she saw the results of United Ways' efforts.
"I went with my mom to drop off the costumes we got from the costume drive and I could not believe how many costumes the United Way had," said the scout. "There was about a million of them! People were sorting them out by size and it looked like it would take forever. I never saw so many costumes in one room!"
Statile feels it is her responsibility to impress upon her members the importance of charity and community service.
"The Girl Scouts are all about helping others. Something like this comes very easy to the girls because they love to help other children," she said. "The thought that a child could not go trick or treating simply because they didn't have a costume is incomprehensible to them. They were happy to help."
In keeping with the spirit of giving, the troop also decided to use their annual Halloween party as a food drive so that they could start food baskets to give to those in need for Thanksgiving.
"We decided that each girl would bring a canned good to the party to use as their admission ticket," said Statile. "It worked out great. We decided it was more important to collect the canned goods than it was for each family to bring a snack to the party. The girls were fine with that. They had a wonderful time and felt good about what they had done."
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