By Khalida Sarwari
Friends and family members will gather next month to see the Boy Scouts of Troop 535 earn their Eagle rank.
The seven boys–Alex Yee, Mukund Prabakar, Theo Lau, Christopher Bell, Nicholas Steele, Colin Gifford and Jai Ahuj–will receive the highest rank in scouting at a March 7 ceremony. The Court of Honor will recognize the accomplishments of the seven scouts, considered to be among the most involved members of Troop 535.
For a scout to receive the Eagle badge, he has to have been an active member of the scouting program for at least seven years, dedicated about three or four hours every week to volunteering efforts, had a strong leadership role within the troop, earned at least 21 merit badges and completed a community project that he planned and organized.
For his project, Alex, a Saratoga High School senior, helped build a labyrinth last May for the garden at Sacred Heart Parish using bender board and concrete gravel. With the help of about 20 people, including fellow troop members as well as family and friends, he completed his project in less than a month.
Alex, 17, said he chose the project because he felt it was unique.
“I feel that the the Sacred Heart Church wanted us to have something beautiful to be placed in the garden, and I thought the labyrinth is a very good addition,” said Alex. “I feel that people will admire the garden more when they see the labyrinth.”
Mukund, also a senior at Saratoga High, did his project at the Sub-Acute Saratoga Children’s Hospital over the course of two days last June. He enlisted about 30 of his fellow scouts, school friends and relatives to help him beautify a roundabout area in front of the facility. They painted over parts that had been chipped from cars backing into it and removed fallen pine needles. They also planted ice plants which can live for a very long time without water and agreed to water them in the beginning, Mukund said. Finally, Mukund’s crew added rocks to give the roundabout a more “aesthetically pleasing appearance.”
“We knew pine needles would fall again, so that’s why we put in ice plants so that the pine needles would fall around it,” said the 17-year-old. He explained that pine needles tend to fall continuously and suffocate other plants, but that ice plants are big enough to ward off the pine needles from falling directly on them.
Theo, a senior at Bellarmine College Preparatory, built a graywater system that he hooked up to a sink at Full Circle Farms in Sunnyvale. The system recycles water via a trough with a bed of horsetail plants. These plants, which are semi-aquatic, absorb the water and can help wet the soil or act as fertilizer.
“The water from people washing their hands feeds these plants,” explained Lau.
The 18-year-old had help from three others, including his mother and fellow scouts. After nearly a year of planning, he and his team got around to installing the system last October. The project was especially meaningful for Lau, who has volunteered for Full Circle Farms in the past and enjoys the outdoors and tracing the origins of his food.
“They do a lot of programs with youth who otherwise might not get the chance to get to have the experience of going to a farm and seeing how food is made and seeing where it comes from,” Lau said.
Jai, 17, a senior at Harker School and Saratoga resident, began his project last summer with eight other scouts and friends. He built four sets of two planter boxes for Horace Mann Elementary in downtown San Jose so that the school could jumpstart their gardening program. Because of the location of the school, space for the planter boxes was hard to find, so the boxes were built on the roof. Jai completed his project by the time school was back in session. He gave the remainder of the money he’d fundraised to the school to provide soil, seeds and gardening books for the children.
“I figured that if I was going to be building anything I’d rather do it for a school that didn’t have their own resources to start their own gardening program,” Jai said.
Christopher, of Los Gatos, built a chicken tractor–which is essentially a chicken coop on wheels–for Full Circle Farm. The tractor measures about 5 feet wide, 12 feet long and 6 feet tall, and was designed to be moved from one fallow field to another, so that the chickens can eat bugs and fertilize the fields during the day and have a safe coop to go to at night.
Troop 535 was chartered in 1959 and has been sponsored by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Saratoga ever since. The troop is under the leadership of Laurie Hecker and two assistant scoutmasters. Members come from a variety of cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds.
The Court of Honor ceremony will be held March 7 from 4 to 6 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. The event is held with an audience of family, friends, chartered organization officials and troop leaders.
Link: Scouts work hard to earn Eagle rank, now honored for their efforts
