Girl power and patches: our first Girl Scout Catch-a-Thon

by Paz Santander

Citizen Science is one of seven service projects through which USA Girl Scouts connect with their communities and volunteer their time to positively impact the world. By participating in these projects, scouts can earn their Give Back Patch to display their involvement with pride!

This year, for the first time, Stall Catchers joined the global event with our first ever USAGSO Catch-A-Thon! We even met some of the participants through two different virtual kick-off sessions where Pietro Michelucci, our director, introduced the Girl Scouts to the concepts of citizen science, crowd-sourced vs. individual vs. expert analysis, Alzheimer's disease, and more.

We invited Girl Scouts to explore citizen science and contribute to Alzheimer's research by playing Stall Catchers like real scientists - no experience necessary! Because each blood vessel is scrutinized by multiple catchers, we can ensure that reliable crowd responses are ultimately generated! We finished each virtual kick-off session with a tour of Stall Catchers to start the 10-day catchathon.

For us it was a great opportunity to visit different parts of the world in a virtual space, since the USA Girl Scouts Overseas (USAGSO) brings together American girls who reside outside of the U.S. During the challenge, 54 Girl Scouts came together from 12 different participating countries. Those countries included South Korea, Austria, China, the Philippines, Portugal, Italy, Japan, the US, Taiwan, Spain, the UK, and Germany.

How did they do? Amazing! Girls Scout catchers collectively achieved 37 lab-equivalent hours of research during the event and the top-5 individual catchers won a pack of citizen science books. Meanwhile, Germany took the prize in the teams competition with the most hours played and scored 3,344,462 points (Congrats!🥳).

This partnership doesn't end here! The winning team will have an exclusive Meet & Greet with the Stall Catchers project team (that’s us!) and will also help us design the first ever Girl Scout Citizen Science patch! All Girl Scouts Overseas who log more than 10 hours playing Stall Catchers will be able to receive it through their website.

Thank you USAGSO for choosing Stall Catchers for your Give Back event and to all the Girl Scouts who participated in the challenge! As our director said during the kick-off sessions:

“We love seeing you in the game and we see you making friends in the Stall Catchers community. It's fantastic. We are glad to have you and hope to see you there. Happy catching!”