No longer just a Seaford Girl Scout

Madeline Kollar, 16, is elected to national council

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Seaford High School sophomore Madeline Kollar’s lifelong participation in Girl Scouts recently reached its peak with the 16-year-old’s selection as a national delegate for Girl Scouts USA’s next council term.
After being a delegate for the past two years to the Girl Scouts of Nassau County council, Kollar, a member of Seaford Wantagh Association Troop 3038, said she was ready to vote on a larger scale.
“I really liked doing the Nassau County one, and I felt like getting to vote on bigger topics would also be more fun,” she said. “Getting to see girls from all over America come to one place and all be there together, I think is going to be really cool.”
After applying for the national delegate post last fall, Kollar was interviewed by a Girl Scouts of Nassau County executive in March before being elected to the national council in May. Along with nine other local delegates, she will represent Nassau County scouts in the national organization, according to Donna Rivera-Downey, GSNC’s chief of marketing and communications. Kollar will attend the next national Girl Scout conference in October 2021 in Orlando, Fla., where she will vote on any changes in the organization’s national policies.
Madeline said that her mother, Christine, the leader of Troop 3038, applied to be an adult volunteer for the national conference, and was accepted. “She’s basically going to have the same role that I do and vote on the same issues,” she said. “There’s an adult portion and a Girl Scout portion that they ask to go” to the conference.

Kollar said that as a member of the Nassau County council, she has voted on issues such as changing the wording of the Nassau County Girl Scouts’ conduct book, but as a national delegate, she will get to vote on more significant topics. “Now it will be on a larger scale of voting on bigger issues that the Girl Scouts of America has,” she said, “which is going to be exciting.”
Until the 2021 conference, she will continue to serve as a delegate to the county conference. “I got voted [in] again this year for a delegate of Nassau County, so I’ll mostly be continuing those responsibilities,” she said.
Kollar has been a Girl Scout since she was in kindergarten. At the end of June, she will become an Ambassador — the highest level a Girl Scout can achieve, roughly equivalent to Eagle Scout in the boys’ program.
“Being a Girl Scout has just made me more of a leader,” she said. “It’s a huge part of every aspect of my life . . . I really, really love it.”
She has also been working toward her Gold Award — the highest award in Girl Scouting — since last year. Her project focuses on implementing science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, programs into local libraries and pre-schools.
She started brainstorming for the project last year. The GSNC approved it last month, and over the next two and a half years, Kollar will work with librarians, and solicit feedback from elementary school and science teachers, as she creates programs and training courses for local libraries and preschools.
“I would summarize my project as helping preschool students and younger-level students get to know STEAM and be more familiar with it and understand it better,” she said. “As our whole world is becoming more technologically advanced, it’s super-beneficial to have those . . . skills at a younger level, so that’s what I’m really trying to implement.”