2022 Impact Award Honoree
Girl Scout Silver Award Winner
Liesel Blau
Liesel has been an active Girl Scout since first grade and scouting has encouraged her to make a difference in the lives of others. She first learned about the Council on Aging Smilemakers program in fifth grade and immediately felt drawn to the cause. Liesel has always been close with her grandparents and she wanted every senior to feel that love, especially during the holidays. Operation Happy Holidays began in 2016 as a Girl Scout Silver Award project designed to inspire young teens to contribute to the needs of seniors during the holidays, but has become so much more for Liesel. She credits her involvement in the project to helping her become a responsible communicator and leader and is thrilled that Operation Happy Holidays has grown each year since its founding. Liesel is planning to continue her involvement with the Council on Aging through her Girl Scout Gold Award project which will offer additional meaningful opportunities for teens to volunteer with the COASC.
Liesel is a senior at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School where she is on student council and is founder and president of the Hearts to Hearts community service club. Athletics are an important part of Liesel’s life; she is a five year member of the USA Youth National Futsal Team, plays soccer for Girls Academy and St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, and runs cross country at school where she ranks third in Division 5 in California. Besides athletics, Liesel’s passions lie in photography and surfing. Liesel is committed to Swarthmore College to play Division 3 soccer and is planning to pursue a degree in Biochemistry.
Operation Happy Holidays Project
Operation Happy Holidays was founded in 2016 as a Girl Scout Silver Award project to to make, collect, and deliver 6,000+ holiday cards to seniors living in skilled nursing facilities every year. The founders, Liesel Blau and Mia Graham, were 11 years old and in 6th grade. They were introduced to the Smilemakers program through their Girl Scout troop leader and felt it was a cause where they could make a difference. In the first year, Liesel and Mia made a video and Cardmaking Instruction Booklet which they shared online to Girl Scout Troops, Lionsheart Chapters, and local schools to raise awareness of the needs of seniors in Orange County and involve young teens in helping to make holiday cards to support the Smilemakers holiday gift program. In addition to small workshops for local Girl Scout troops, the girls led a cardmaking workshop for 200 students at their middle school. Their goal was to collect 4,000 cards from the kids in their community of Ladera Ranch. The response was overwhelming. The first year, the girls collected approximately 5,000 cards! Even more exciting, they received cards from hundreds of teens from many different groups across Orange County.
Since 2016, Liesel and Mia have worked together to continue to offer this meaningful project to young members across the county. They have expanded the project to additional schools, continuing to lead workshops at more middle and high schools, and have added more organizations such as NCL to the list of participating organizations. Each year, they receive calls from leaders of programs at schools across Orange County asking how to get involved. The Council on Aging has helped to support the project as well by including organizations that contact them asking to help and by adding a drop box at their offices in Irvine.
The Girl Scout mission aspires to “build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Liesel and Mia have experienced this firsthand through their Operation Happy Holidays project. Not only have they been able to create a sustainable project that helps seniors in our community, but they have also developed skills that will benefit them for life. After the first year, Liesel commented that working on Operation Happy Holidays taught her how to make calls to adults, organize meetings, and lead workshops, all of which helped her build self-confidence to try new things. “It has been exciting to be a part of an ongoing project where I could make a meaningful and measurable impact as a young teen, while also learning how to be a responsible communicator and leader,” shared Liesel. Looking back on the project, Mia said that “Operation Happy Holidays taught me how the smallest acts of kindness can go such a long way for others.”
The girls hope that after they leave for college, Operation Happy Holidays will continue to be an important component of the Smilemakers program each year. In the short term, their legacy will continue through Liesel’s younger sister’s Girl Scout troop. Their advice to other teens looking to make a difference would be to find a cause you are passionate about and seek help from your community, because with a little support and perseverance, we can all do our part to make the world a better place.