The price of eggs is no concern if you have a bunch of feathery friends to help you out, which is why Girl Scout Cadettes from Troop 36774 are raising chickens to combat food insecurity in their community.
Three Cadettes brought two chickens and a lot of knowledge Dec. 10 to Northland Public Library to teach families how to keep hens as a sustainable food source.
For their Urban Eggs project, the Cadettes are raising seven hens to donate to West View Urban Farm. Once the farm gets the chickens, they’ll donate the eggs to local food pantries to address food insecurity.
To earn the Silver Award, Devan Brown, 14, Olivia Stanko, 12, and Livi O’Donnell, 14, each had to complete 50 hours of work on the project and make it something sustainable that can lead to lasting change in the community. The Silver Award is one of the highest awards a Girl Scout can earn.
The Cadettes are educating West View Urban Farm volunteers and the community through presentations — like the one they gave at the library — on how to care for chickens.
“We all know that the eggs can be an extra source of protein in people’s diets,” Devan said. “So we wanted to help people by donating to food shelters.”
Jodi McLaughlin, executive director of West View Urban Farm, said the farm’s motivation since its establishment in 2022 has been to grow food for charitable purposes.
“Everything we grow, we donate or give away through mutual aid,” she said. “We wanted eggs to add to that, and so this is going to help us make that possible.”
Devan’s interest in chickens started when her brother missed out on a first grade hatching project at Highcliff Elementary School in 2020 because of covid and the family decided to do it at home. Devan realized her love for chickens and asked her mother, Diane Bova, if the family could keep some.
At first, Bova found caring for the chickens “overwhelming.” She never had pets growing up because she’s allergic to animals, but the chickens were “kind of perfect because they’re outside animals.”
A few years of chicken-raising later, Devan, along with Livi and Olivia, started thinking about what to do for their Silver Award projects.
“A few weeks before we started the project, we learned about food insecurity and ways to help, so I think that also inspired us,” Olivia said.
When Bova heard that her friend, McLaughlin, was considering adding chickens to the farm, she brought the idea of a partnership to Devan.
Devan then teamed up with Livi and Olivia, and they pitched their idea to McLaughlin. The trio got started with their initiative by hatching a new batch of chickens with a kit donated to them by Rent the Chicken, a Freeport-based business started by Jenn and Phil Tompkins.
Now, the chickens are almost ready to move to the farm and the project is nearly complete. Bova said once they’re done, the three Cadettes plan to volunteer at the farm to continue helping with the chickens.
Though this may be one of their most ambitious projects to date, the Cadettes are no strangers to community service.
Bova, co-leader of Troop 36774, said the troop of 11 girls love making a difference by doing an “extraordinary amount” of community service — they logged about 150 hours of community service last year.
Bova said previous community service projects included West View fall and spring cleanups, assembling personal care item bags for a local women’s shelter, feeding more than 400 families through three annual food drives for their “everything but the turkey” Thanksgiving dinner kits and more.
Bova said she helped start the troop when her daughter was in kindergarten as there were no available troops for her age group at the time.
Eventually, another mother Bova met through Devan’s dance classes stepped up as a co-leader. Nine years later, Bova finds the troop special as it’s made up of “a lovely, eclectic group of girls from several different school districts,” including North Hills and North Allegheny.
“Some of these gals got very close and would never have met otherwise,” she said.