Wantagh Girl Scout preaches kindness

Angelica Balitsos envisions a world where everyone is a bit kinder to one another. Looking to make a change one person at a time, the Wantagh Girl Scout has started a program to teach children the value of kindness.

Balitsos will host her program, “The End of Bullying Begins With You,” for the second time at the Wantagh Public Library this Saturday. It is open to all children in second through fifth grade.

The 17-year-old senior at Wantagh High School is a Girl Scout with Troop 3655. She is working on her Gold Award, the highest honor in the Scouts, which includes a community service project. Balitsos has already exceeded the required 80 hours of work.

She has previously earned her Bronze and Silver awards, which were team projects with other members of her troop. For Silver, they created a pamphlet giving parents suggestions about activities for their children in Wantagh. Now, Balitsos is going for the gold, and it is a project she must do by herself.

“Completing these three would be such an outstanding goal for me to reach personally as a Girl Scout,” she said.

Balitsos got the idea for an anti-bullying program after she was crowned Miss Wantagh in 2013. She followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, who created Unity Day at Wantagh High School, an event where every student was asked to wear orange and sign a pledge that they would not bully others, either face to face or through social media.

She decided to bring that message to younger children, and came up with an idea for a program for elementary students at the library. Her program on Saturday will focus on the meaning of kindness. It will begin by having her ask the meaning of the word to each child. At the end of the program, she will ask them again, to see how their interpretation of the word has changed.

“I feel that with my workshops, every child will learn a better meaning of the word kindness,” she said. “My ultimate goal is for each child to learn something new.”