This is a big week for the Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains. The Fort Worth-based council starts its 2025 cookie season this coming Friday. The proceeds help troops do something good in their communities, like what happened in Burleson. Burleson Troop 3412 used cookie sales to fund its Silver Award Project. The girls worked with the city of Burleson, Burleson Parks and Recreation, and the Burleson ISD Special Education Department to design and install a communication board at a local park. Individuals who are non-verbal or have limited English proficiency can communicate by pointing at an icon on the board known as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) board. In their Silver Award project report, the troop said: “In visiting our community All Abilities park, we noticed that non-verbal children were not represented and supported in that park. This issue was brought to our attention when we visited our local park to play one day. We had been watching our troop leaders, Ms. Katie and Ms. Kristine, work on creating icons for their special needs classroom and were curious about what they were used for. We started talking about how it would be neat for those icons to be able to be used in the park and we started researching how to make that happen in our community.” The girls are getting good feedback. One woman wrote, “From a momma with a son who has autism, thank you for the communication board, Troop 3412!” The Girl Scouts Silver Award is the highest a Girl Scout Cadette (grades 6-8) can earn. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.