By Zach Spicer | For The Tribune

Macy Casner is going for gold.

As her time as a Girl Scout comes to an end, the 18-year-old Seymour resident is working toward the organization’s highest and most prestigious honor.

According to Girl Scouts of the USA, Gold Award Girl Scouts use everything they’ve learned as a member of the organization to help fix a problem in their community or make a lasting change in their world.

The process includes learning everything you can about an issue through research and trusted sources, forming a team by identifying experts and people in your community who could help you and making a plan of how you could tackle the issue.

Once the project proposal is submitted to your council for approval, you lead your team and carry out your plan.

When the project is done and reviewed and approved by the council, the Girl Scout is presented the Gold Award.

Casner’s project? Creating a pet memorial garden outside the Humane Society of Jackson County in Seymour.

Around the time she became a Girl Scout at age six, she started giving back to the local private nonprofit animal welfare organization that provides short-term shelter care for animals, lost and found services, adoptions and advice regarding animal health and behavior.

At that age, she donated half of her birthday money to the shelter.

“I always liked the animals,” said Casner, a recent graduate of Seymour High School. “A lot of people don’t know (the Humane Society) is back here, so it’s just helping them.”

The money she donated allowed her to sponsor a few dogs that eventually went to good homes.

She continued that annual tradition until she was 16.

“To me, money is just money,” Casner said. “Actions mean more to me than what something can buy.”

Casner’s love of the Humane Society was shared by fellow members of Girl Scout Troop 1239 and her mother, Missy Casner, the troop’s leader.

They have annually helped with the organization’s Dog Days Dog Show, assisted with projects and made donations of money and supplies.

“We all love animals, we all care about them and that’s what we could do,” Macy said. “We’ve done other service projects, like helping Riley (Hospital for Children) and stuff like that, but this has always been here.”

As much as she has stuck with helping the Humane Society, Macy has stuck with Girl Scouts.

Initially, her mother thought Girl Scouts would be good for scholarship opportunities.

In the early years, Macy thought Girl Scouts seemed like a fun thing to do.

Once she entered high school, though, she understood the scholarship benefits.

“There were a few times back during middle school, freshman year that I was just not thinking that it’s cool anymore because you don’t see those kids like I am that are older and doing this,” Macy said.

The friends she developed through Girl Scouts helped her stick with it.

“Close friends through this that became family, I think that’s why,” she said. “It’s a sisterhood. It’s just expanding your world a little bit.”

Having the Gold Award on your résumé can make you stand out when it comes to college admissions, internships, job interviews and scholarship applications such as the GSUSA Gold Award Scholarship that’s valued at $5,000.

That helped Macy stick with it, too. Including her accomplishments in Girl Scouts and 4-H were helpful as she prepared to study robotic engineering and meteorology at Purdue University.

She said Girl Scouts has helped her with public speaking and community service.

“That gets you out there, gets you comfortable with it,” she said. “When you’re in high school getting NHS (National Honor Society) hours, volunteer hours like that, you’re comfortable with it. … I feel like Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts help you think about others. It kind of opens up your eyes to what possibilities there can be instead of having a fixed view on something.”

After doing research and securing donations for her Gold Award project, Macy was able to begin creating the pet memorial garden.

“Trying to find something that will work was probably the hardest thing,” she said. “Then writing about it, budget, sources of income, there was almost 50 hours of prep work that went into this before we could actually build this.”

She received donations of shrubs, plants, flowers, rock, buckets, a sign, bricks, benches, a concrete statue and money from businesses and individuals.

The garden also will include solar lights and a birdbath.

Ellen Mirer, a volunteer with the Humane Society, is her advisor for the project.

“One is to bring attention out here to the animals and place out here,” Macy said of the purpose of the garden.

“Two, a place of reflection because I lost a dog not that long ago, one that I grew up with since I was 3,” she said. “It’s hard when you lose a family member, really. I want this to be a place where they can reflect on that, they can just relax for a second, and if they want to, they can go in there and get another animal, have another family member be a part of their family.”

A ribbon cutting for the garden, which the public is invited to, is set for 11 a.m. Sept. 2 at the Humane Society of Jackson County, 1109 G Ave. West. If all goes as planned, Macy hopes to receive her Gold Award that day.

When she was a cadet in middle school, she earned the Silver Award. Her project was promoting the horse camp at SpringHill Camps in Seymour.

“It meant a lot to me and (fellow Girl Scout) Mia Prewitt, so we did it together so we could bring some light over there, so we could get some more people over there because they were thinking about closing it down,” Macy said. “It was one of the things that we enjoyed every summer.”

These awards will never be taken away from Macy and will help her for the rest of her life.

“When you’re applying for colleges and scholarship applications, they look for these things,” she said. “These awards push you to be the best.”