BELLEFONTE — Girl Scout Troop 40036 out of Bellefonte has reached quite a milestone. The group earned their Bronze Award, the highest honor a Junior girl scout can receive.

The troop earned this honor through a Pajama Drive they held in December of 2020 in Centre County.

“Troop 40036 started the process for their Bronze Award back in October 2020. Their ideas were grand, and after some planning, they selected to hold a pajama drive for the Centre County Foster Program,” Troop Leader Rachelle Weiser said.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a pajama party planned to collect donations was canceled and instead a pajama drive was planned to be held at Bellefonte’s Victorian Christmas.

“The girls did advertising, made signs, hung signs around town, made information sheets and bookmarks for the foster program to hand out and planned the whole day,” Weiser said.

Although Victorian Christmas was canceled, the troop’s drive was included in the borough’s Giving Saturday.

“We were thrilled because we were still hoping for some foot traffic during the day,” Weiser said. “Our event was to run both Saturday and Sunday.”

The troop set a goal to collect 100 sets of pajamas for the foster program, they far exceeded this number.

“We passed that goal before we started. We changed our goal to 400, an easy fix on our signs — and we reached that by the end of the day,” Weiser said.

Five hundred fifty sets of new pajamas, 18 bags of new clothing, and over $400 in donations were raised by the end of the drive with some donations still trickling in.

“Without this wonderful community of Bellefonte, we would not have been able to make such a generous donation,” Weiser said. “These girls truly understand the meaning of ‘helping a sister girl scout’ and made the community aware of an important need.”

A ceremony for the girls is planned for the spring.