Congratulations, Dana, on earning your Gold Award. GSSEM is proud of you and your dedication to making a positive impact on your community and beyond.

Project: Dog Training Items for Veterans

Dana White’s Gold Award project supported her local veteran community by providing essential materials to strengthen local service-dog training programs.

“Veteran suicide is a really big problem, and it was something I wanted to help with in any way,” Dana said.

According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study that Dana researched, “Veterans with service dogs had a 66% lower chance of receiving a PTSD diagnosis after three months with a dog. The study also found that veterans with service dogs had lower anxiety and depression, fewer feelings of isolation, and a higher quality of life,” the study said.

Realizing the benefits service dogs offer to special operations veterans suffering from PTSD, anxiety, depression and isolation, Dana designed and built specialized training tables and benches for the group Special Operations Wounded Warriors (SOWW) and their mobile outreach trailer.

Those tables and benches were used by the organization to train service dogs for veterans.

Golden benchmark

“These aren’t like regular benches for people,” she explained. “They were specially designed to work with training service dogs.”

Dana shared the blueprints with the organization and other service-dog training organizations to extend the impact of her project.

“SOWW will use the training items on the road (around the country) for their demonstrations to people on what they do while raising awareness about their charity,” she said.

In addition to her carpentry skills, Dana also spoke with 95 veterans and their families, providing education and sometimes gentle encouragement to a veteran to ask for help.

Learn more!

Dana chats about her Gold Award project on GSSEM’s YouTube channel.

Find out more about Girl Scout Highest Awards on our website at www.gssem.org/highestawards.