Stowmarket Brownie goes above and beyond to collect all 18 interest badges and achieve Gold Award

A Brownie from Stowmarket has impressed her leaders by completing all extra-curricular interest badges and gaining her Brownie Gold Award.

Isabella Harvey, 10, pushed herself to collect all the badges which have to be completed outside the club’s meetings, even though she only needed six to get the Gold Award.

The ‘enthusiastic’ Isabella continued on through the pandemic and involved her grandparents and community in the tasks she set her mind to.

Each badge involved a different activity. The Charity Badge saw Isabella collect unused food items that could then be dropped off at the Stowmarket food bank and for the Speaking Out Badge, Isabella talked about the rubbish on her road and helped clean it up. Isabella and her mum, Sara, also wrote a letter to the town council and their local residents’ association to see whether anything could be done about the McDonald’s litter which started accumulating on their street.

But Isabella’s favourite badge she achieved was the Space Badge - something that she is especially passionate about.

“I quite liked the Space Badge because I’m really interested in learning about space.

“To get the Gold Award I led a session about space, we did a quiz and we did a game ordering the planets from the closest to the sun to the furthest away.

“I also went to my old Rainbows group to see if they would like to join Brownies and I told them what it was like.”

Clare Brinkley, one of the leaders at Brownies, said when Isabella started the group at age seven, she immediately started to work on her interest badges - coming up with inventive ways to collect them and completing them “to a really high standard.” She also said that since the badges programme changed in 2018, Isabella is the second girl to complete all 18 interest badges.

“Isabella was one of the girls enthusiastic enough to take on the challenges that we gave her plus set her own to complete the badges,” she said. “She used hobbies that she already had outside of Brownies and some were completely new.”

Isabella’s time at Brownies has come to an end, but she hopes to one day be an actress.