Girl Scouts Build Big Ugly Library

A girl scouts troop in North Laurel, MD, has launched an ambitious project: to build a children's library for Big Ugly Creek, an economically challenged mining town in West Virginia. The "Big Ugly Book Angels," as the nine teens of Cadette Troop 553 call themselves, have been working since spring 2002 to convert a 24-by-36 foot room in a former elementary school into the town's only library media center. With less than 50 percent of Big Ugly Creek's adult population holding high school diplomas, the town has no Head Start program or library.

So far, the scouts have raised enough money to buy bookshelves, and they've collected about 6,000 donated books and computer equipment. The library, expected to open this summer, will become a part of the Big Ugly Community Center, which is administered by Step by Step (www.wvdreamers.org), a nonprofit organization. Since 1995, the center has provided enrichment programs such as after-school and summer programs, wood shop, crafts programs, and a playground and greenhouse for the area's 200 needy families. Nearly all of the kids who use the center receive free or reduced price lunches.

Big Ugly is a world away from the bedroom community of North Laurel, outside Washington, DC, where Troop 553 searched last year for a children's literacy project to help them earn a Silver Award, the highest honor for a Cadette Girl Scout. Troop leader Jodye Russell approached the Save the Children organization, which put them in touch with Michael Tierney, Step By Step's executive director.