Leadership
Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship ✷ Entrepreneurship ✷ Entrepreneurship ✷ Entrepreneurship ✷ Entrepreneurship ✷
May 2025
Ava with Animal Supplies for the SPCALA
Here I am working on one of my biggest projects, the final project of my Girl Scouts career, which includes over 100 hours of developing creative strategies to give back to our communities in an effort to make the world a better place. So whenever I have time, I work on my non-profit dog supply business ‘Barks and Bandanas’ where I collaborate with local animal shelters to improve adoption rates and support their needs for food and dog supplies. Through my ‘Barks and Bandanas Club’ that I also started at school, we first have clothing drives where people donate unwanted clothing. We organize the collections, wash the clothes, cut them up using a pattern, and then sew them together to make all kinds of cute bandanas for the dogs to wear. It has been exciting for my friends and me to watch this long-term project come together through our many hours of hard work. Strategizing the production of the dog supplies and delegating tasks to my friends and club members has taught me a lot about leadership and the importance of working together toward a common goal, as well as effective time management with other people. Despite many of these skills not being taught in school, I believe they are critical for success in the business world. Our continued collaboration, which I believe is one of the most valuable business practices, is the main catalyst of our work that creates progress. Collaboration is how we’re going to build a better tomorrow! I’m going to continue doing this next year, and I will be training the next Club President to take over my role.
After Christmas Break, I organized a week-long clothing drive, during which people dropped off unwanted clothes that we used to make our doggie bandanas and toys. I specifically instructed people to donate all unwanted clothing, even if it was old or had stains, because we also did the hard work of cleaning and sanitizing the clothes before we cut them up for the production process. The clothing drive was very successful, and we were able to collect hundreds of pounds of clothes in a very short period of time.
Here we have all the supplies that we used to make the dog toys for the small business project that I started at my school for the Barks & Bandanas Club. I pre-cut these pieces of fabric from the donations that we gathered at our clothing drive and arranged them into “kits” to train the Club Members to make the dog toys that I designed. These training kits were pivotal in teaching everyone how to properly assemble the dog toys that we donated to SPCA Los Angeles.
Here’s a pile of the dog toys that we produced as a team in my Barks & Bandanas Club. You can see that the design is rather simple but effective. I decided to go with this design for the dog toys because it was the safest way to produce a dog toy without sewing, since we wanted to prevent any potential safety issues with thread. We knotted the fabric at both ends after braiding it together to create a toy that could be used for chewing or playing tug of war.
June 2025
Ava at the Animal Shelter
Here I am loading my trunk with all the finished doggie bandanas & dog toys that we made. Then I was on my way to the Los Angeles SPCA to donate everything we created as a team. So far, we have donated 229 dog toys & doggie bandanas, & we are just getting started! We still have a bunch of leftover clothing that we haven’t used, so we are continuing with our production process for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we are able to get through the rest of the donations before the end of the year, & next year we will have another clothing donation drive in order to collect more materials for dog toys & bandanas.
January 2025
SPCALA (Animal Shelter) Ava & Dog
Here I had just dropped off the 3rd round of donations to the local animal shelter 15 minutes from my house. They brought out this adorable dog for me to meet & play with, & I got to give him one of the dog toys that we made for ‘Barks & Bandanas,’ & it was really rewarding to see the positive impact that we were able to make in creating more joy in the world.
June 2025
Ava with Animal Supplies
Here I am at SPCA LA on my last trip to deliver the donations that we made in my club. I made a total of 4 trips to deliver donations, since we were able to produce so many dog toys & bandanas. This photo is special to me because it was a milestone day for me to make this final donation trip after a long year of hard work with my team. This photo represents the culmination of a year’s worth of planning, strategizing, delegating, training, & creative processes that were a lot of fun to do with all my friends. These entrepreneurial memories will come with me on my journey as a businessperson, & I look forward to my future creative endeavors as a social entrepreneur.
Volunteering
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Volunteering
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Volunteering
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Volunteering
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Volunteering
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Volunteering ✷ Volunteering ✷ Volunteering ✷ Volunteering ✷ Volunteering ✷
October 2021
Ava & Maddie Volunteer at PS I Love You
Every September my sister Maddie and I participate in “P.S. I Love You Day at the Beach,” which is an event where we spend an entire day with kids who many times have never seen the beach before, so we get to organize a day of fun introducing them to beach activities and spend time getting to know them. Creating memories like this can last a lifetime, & I know I’ll never forget seeing this young boy experience the beach for the first time. ‘P.S. I Love You’ is a national foundation that focuses on building skills around social and emotional health with lower income children who many times have never traveled outside their own neighborhoods. I believe that this sort of social and emotional development helps people build a better world for all of us because it increases people’s abilities to relate to each other.
March 2025
Ava & Her Grandma Sewing
My Grandma taught me how to hand sew when I was six years old, & then she taught me how to use my sewing machine just recently in high school. Learning how to sew with her created a beautiful bond between us, & I was grateful to learn this skill that she has used her entire life. She built her own seamstress business using her expertise. Seeing & experiencing her joy that she has built for herself in the entrepreneurship space has inspired me to pursue a career in business & given me the confidence & experience to know I can blaze my own path in life. Being a leader & building a life that makes sense for me is also something I’m teaching my fellow Club members at school. I believe that leading through example is an important way to empower others to achieve greatness in their own ways.
July 2025
Ava & Her Mom Volunteering
Here I am with my Mom working as volunteers with ‘Food Forward,’ which is a national non-profit organization that works to eliminate food waste by transporting leftovers from local Farmer’s Markets to families in need. Not only does this help reduce food waste, but it also educates people about the importance of consuming fresh fruits & vegetables as well as raising awareness about the accessibility of Farmer’s Markets. My Mom & I normally work with ‘Food Forward’ in the springtime, & it’s an activity that we always look forward to doing together!
Here I am volunteering again with ‘P.S. I Love You,’ & this time I’m doing facepainting at an annual event. It’s a mini-carnival where we have booths with games, & the kids get to have fun with their friends, & everyone wins a prize! This particular year I chose to work in the face painting booth, & I’m so glad I did. I painted purple flowers on this young girl’s face, & she loved it so much that she brought all her friends back to my booth to paint their faces, too! Building these kinds of core memories with children is life-changing; I know I’ll never forget it, & I hope that the kids we work with are able to take these lessons of being creative, spending time with friends, & spreading joy with them wherever they go in life!
Here I am making enchiladas with two of my friends volunteering for ‘1736 House,’ which is a local organization that makes large, homecooked meals that we deliver to women’s shelters where women seek refuge from domestic violence & learn to rebuild their lives, one day at a time. We do this volunteer work throughout the year, & knowing that we can provide nutritious, homemade meals to women who are in transition from one home to another is important because it builds hope & sisterhood, letting them know that they are never truly alone. We’re all in this together!