March 28, 2024

SCOUT KINDNESS

Creston Girl Scout donates 125 cases of water to disaster relief

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A local Girl Scout recently raised 125 cases of water to be donated to the Salvation Army for hurricane and disaster relief.

Kaya Fiebelkorn, 8, is a third-grader at Creston Community Elementary School. On Saturday and Sunday of this past weekend, Kaya raised money outside of the Creston Hy-Vee with the support of Store Manager Jeremy Odem.

“As people started to come in, and she gained more and more momentum, she just got more and more excited, and how can you say no to that?” said Odem. “She was smiling, and excited, and it just gets you excited too. Especially for something like this that doesn’t even benefit her.”

Kaya has been a member of the Girl Scouts for four years. She is a Brownie, Juliette, meaning she doesn’t belong to a particular troop of scouts. Kaya works on her own toward earning badges, raising money for camps and completing service trips.

According to Kaya, she has earned “a lot” of badges during her time with the Scouts — though her favorite one was kayaking.

In one excited sentence, Kaya explained, “I earned it by — when I was in Exira — I went kayaking and got lost and a person helped me paddle the way back when I was tired!”

But Kaya’s reasoning for starting up a relief drive here in Creston, all on her own, was well beyond her years.

“Because people that are getting in danger, and people that are getting hurt don’t have any water probably,” Kaya said. “Because it either got caught in the fire or damaged by a fire or a hurricane. So I wanted to help by doing that.”

A local food drive, being organized by another group of Girl Scouts, had prompted Kaya to organize a service project of her own, explained Kaya’s mother Millie Fiebelkorn. Kaya then compiled a list of different project ideas, including clothing and toy drives among other ideas.

“And we’re like, OK, limit your scope a little bit,” Millie said. “We can’t do all these projects at once.

“So when we showed her pictures of the hurricanes, she decided that donating water was a good way to go — because they needed water — and so she made a poster and got everything going.”

It was Kaya’s enthusiasm that impressed Millie most, however.

“The fact that, as far as with this project, she was able to collect so much within just five hours or so — she did 125 cases between the two days.

“She was more than willing to step up, and do this on her own, even though she didn’t have help from anyone else besides me and her uncle sitting there chaperoning,” Millie said. “She walked up to people, and was able to ‘wow’ them, and explain what her project was.”

Kaya was less bashful, however, saying, “But I have a cute smile, and that’s probably what wowed them!”