Christina and her fellow Girl Scouts spent a lot of time visiting with and hosting holiday parties for the residents at Chrysalis House, one of the leading agencies in Maryland that operates several facilities to provide addiction treatment and prevention services to women and their at-risk children.

But the visits and the events weren't enough for 12-year-old Christina. She wanted to do something bigger, something more. So she asked the administrators at Chrysalis House's Crownsville facility how she could help them in a more permanent way. Their answer was they could really use an 8' x 10' storage shed, but Christina had a bigger idea. She met with an architect, and the plans for the little storage shed blossomed into a two-story, 1700-square-foot facility.
But when Christina brought the blueprints to the Girl Scouts' Gold Award Committee, she was told that the project was too big, too complicated. 

But Christina didn't give up. She pounded the pavement and met with anyone who would listen. And over the course of the next six years, she enlisted dozens of individuals and businesses, the managers of 13 home improvement stores, and three local contractors to donate time and materials and hard work to build a $300,000 facility. Christina was right in the middle of it all, hanging drywall, laying tile, landscaping, painting, and meeting with all of the business and contractors to keep the project moving.

On the first floor of the new building, Christina started the Butterfly Boutique, a thrift store that allowed the women at Chrysalis House to learn job skills and to support themselves, their children, and their recoveries. The top floor became a job training center.  The building suffered severe flood damage earlier this year, but after a five-month renovation, Christina's building is undergoing its own metamorphosis to become a computer lab to provide job readiness skills on the first floor, and GED classes for the women in attendance on the top floor.

“I’ve learned that anything is possible—even when you’re very young—if you just believe in yourself and in what you’re doing.”