CHARLOTTE — Charlotte Catholic High School announces that four of its seniors have earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the most prestigious honor in Girl Scouting.
Sarah Anderson, Taylor Buck, Caroline Gorman, and Kelsie Roper were honored by the Hornets’ Nest Council on April 29. Their Gold Award ceremony was held that afternoon at Calvary Church.
The Girl Scout Gold Award represents the highest achievement in Girl Scouting.
Sarah Anderson wished to use her Gold Award project as a means to raise awareness of the need to spay and neuter pets. She also wanted to make more people mindful of the amount of time and money that are needed to provide a loving home to a dog or cat. Her concern involves people who think they want pets, but once they adopt a dog or a cat, they realize they are unable to take care of them, and leave them at a shelter.
She established a club at Charlotte Catholic called the PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) Club, and set up a website, www.charlottecatholicpawsclub.weebly.com, to provide information to the community about homeless animals in our area and all over the country. The website emphasizes the importance of spaying and neutering. It also seeks to reach people before they adopt pets, and raise awareness among prospective pet owners regarding the money and time it takes to provide a good home to a dog or cat.
She spent more than 80 hours on her Gold Award project, and received a Certificate of Recognition from U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis.
Taylor Buck realized that teenagers need a space where they feel safe, comfortable and welcomed. This led her to discover that churches that gave serious thought to their teen meeting spaces had higher levels of teen participation.
She formed a team of eight teens, and they compiled data from churches around the United States, as well as churches in other countries. Using the data they collected, they formed a plan to renovate the church’s teen room at her church. She coordinated a 24-hour lock-in to complete the renovation.
She then worked with the church’s video director and a local producer to make a video to share the information with other churches. She also learned about web design and created a web site to make her information available to other Girl Scouts searching for Gold Award projects, in the hope that they would be able to complete similar projects at their churches, giving teenagers a place of belonging.
Caroline Gorman planned her Gold Award project around her interest in artistic pursuits. She planned and led an Artistic Career Fair for high school students considering careers in artistic fields. She recruited professionals representing many different fields, including interior design, graphic design, architecture, fashion design, media production, marketing, photojournalism, makeup artistry, art therapy, and textile design.
The Artistic Career Fair was held at Charlotte Catholic, and students from four different high schools, as well as home-schooled students, attended the event.
She then created a website, www.artisticcareerfair.weebly.com, and a project planning guide, so that others could plan similar career fairs for their high schools or communities.
Kelsie Roper chose to use her Gold Award project to address several escalating issues: the decreasing amount of time children are spending outside, their lack of knowledge about the sources of their foods, their lack of concern about the environment and the effects of climate change, and the rise in childhood obesity. She wished to give children the same opportunity she had as a child to be around and work with nature.
She created a Garden Club at St. Gabriel School, where she attended elementary school. She built high-quality raised garden beds in a sunny corner of the playground behind the school, and planted several different kinds of flowers and vegetables. She provided seeds, information and gardening instructions to the families of the children in the club.
She then established a curriculum on the science of gardening, the practice of eating well, and the effect of our actions on the environment. Garden Club meetings involve expanding local lessons learned to a global scale.
She inspired the club members to take small steps every day to do their part to save the planet and help the world. In addition to working with St. Gabriel children, she shared her knowledge and curriculum with five local public elementary schools.
She spent more than 80 hours on her Gold Award project, and also received a Certificate of Recognition from Sen. Tillis.
“I am extremely impressed with the Gold Award projects completed by Sarah, Taylor, Caroline and Kelsie,” said Principal Kurt Telford.
“Their desire to help our community and make our world a better place is exemplary. We are proud of their ideas, their efforts, their longtime commitments to Girl Scouting, and of course their achievement of their Gold Awards.”
— Carolyn Kramer Tillman. Photo provided by Robin Fisher
CHARLOTTE — With the summer months comes the opportunity for improvements to be made at many facilities, particularly schools, in the Diocese of Charlotte. This summer, the diocesan Properties Office is overseeing a tremendous to-do list of more than 80 maintenance projects for the Catholic schools alone, besides additional capital projects for the new St. Joseph College Seminary, historic Old St. Joseph Church in Mount Holly, Western Carolina University Campus Ministry and Christ the King High School.
School maintenance projects under way range from carpet and tile replacement, to painting and ordering replacement classroom furniture and equipment for the coming school year.
At Christ the King High School, a two-story classroom expansion project has begun, with approximately 27,000 square feet of new construction. The expansion includes a new cafeteria, large multipurpose room for drama and band, a fabrication shop, three science classrooms and eight general purpose classrooms. There will also be a parking lot expansion that will add 53 new spaces and tie into a new loop road that will connect Crusader Lane to Shiloh Church Road for a new secondary entrance to the campus.
The project is expected to take a year to complete, with a cost estimate of $11 million which will be funded by the Mecklenburg Area Catholic Schools capital fee.
Among other notable maintenance projects at the diocesan schools are the replacement of the gymnasium floor at Our Lady of the Assumption School in Charlotte and the refinishing of the stage floor at Holy Trinity Middle School in Charlotte.
At St. Joseph College Seminary, a home on nearby Hillside Avenue has been purchased and is being renovated to house up to 10 additional seminarians until a permanent seminary can be built in the diocese. This fall, the college seminary expects to have 16 students – seven seminarians continuing their studies from last year housed at the current residence behind St. Ann Church, and nine new seminarians housed at the second house. The two houses are close to each other, with the church located between them.
Expansion work at Christ the King High School. (Photos provided by Anthony Morlando.) 
Out with the old and in with the new: WCU's Catholic Campus Ministry chapel ready for a remodel.Diocesan officials hope to close in mid-September on a 50-acre site in Mount Holly for the college seminary’s permanent location. Once the property has been purchased, fundraising efforts to construct the seminary building will continue outside the diocese. Concentrated fundraising efforts can begin in the diocese in the fall of 2018. The second house next to St. Ann Church will later be sold as an investment property.
In addition, Old St. Joseph Church in Mount Holly had a structural and restoration analysis completed this summer. Over the coming months, bids will be accepted to help renovate the 174-year-old church to fix the roof, floors and other architectural weaknesses in the historic structure. This project is expected to cost $100,000 to address the most critical issues. Additional funds will be needed to finish the restoration. Fundraising efforts in the community will take place later in 2018 to raise these additional funds.
Old St. Joseph Church was built in 1843 for and by Irish immigrants, who had come to mine for gold along the Catawba River. It is the oldest Catholic Church still standing in the state and is an official state and U.S. historical site. Today it is used only for special occasions such as the feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph in March.
The original Our Lady of the Assumption building on Shenandoah Avenue in Charlotte has been sold to a local Christian church. The diocese had been using the old building for storage, but diocesan officials are in the process of purchasing a more appropriate storage facility on Rozzelles Ferry Road in Charlotte.
At Western Carolina University, the old Campus Ministry building has seen a $125,000 remodel of the chapel, kitchen, bathrooms and general improvements to the 2,400-square-foot facility.
Extensive Campus Ministry summer projects at four universities over the past two years have been funded by the 2014 diocesan-wide “Forward in Faith, Hope, and Love” campaign. A total of approximately $480,000 from the FFHL campaign has been used for these improvements.
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter