Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan honors Lucy Radabaugh with the most prestigious award in the world for girls: the Girl Scout Gold Award. Lucy, of Rochester Hills, is among 13 young women who have taken the initiative to bettering their communities through sustainable community change projects. The time and commitment they’ve dedicated towards these projects prove they’re true leaders and exceptional examples for all girls to look up to.

The Gold Award is Girl Scout’s highest honor and is presented to Girl Scouts who address a community issue or problem they are passionate about. They’re required to spend a minimum of 80 hours investigating the problem, creating a plan, and implementing it.

Did you know that mental illnesses cause sizable changes in an individual’s behavior? In fact, 1 in 5 adolescents will experience some type of mental illness. So, for her Gold Award project, Lucy created a free and easily accessible digital catalog of teen-friendly mental health resources. She saw that online mental health resources for teenagers and young adults did exist, but were hard to find amongst other unpredictable or unreliable sites on the internet. Realizing that teens in crisis would be significantly challenged to find the help they need, Lucy worked with 20 local and national organizations to create an online space to collect and organize mental health resources into a more holistic, user-friendly format. Her site, www.thesunshineindex.com, will continue to operate with assistance from Bill White, an established mental health blogger. The Sunshine Index helps teens learn more about mental illness and how to help themselves or their friends through it anytime, anywhere, and at their own pace.

It now has more than 100 followers across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and has been exposed to about 23,000 people.

“Anything is possible if you’re willing to take it one step at a time.”