Carley Ray Becomes First Nantucket Girl Scout To Earn Gold Award

Carley Ray, a junior at Nantucket High School, became the first ever Nantucket Girl Scout to achieve Gold Award status earlier this month. The Girl Scout Gold Award is the girl scout’s equivalent to the Eagle Scout rank that boy scouts can achieve. Ray has been with Nantucket Girl Scouts Troop 66120 since she was five years old and in Kindergarten as a Daisy Scout.

Ray previously completed both the Bronze Award (reconstruction of the Veteran’s Memorial Garden on Federal Street with her entire Troop) and the Silver Award (an emotional help coloring book in three languages with just three scouts from her Troop).

Ray’s mother, Crystal, is also Ray’s scout leader. She told the Current that these two awards are the steppingstone to help girls understand what it takes to plan, coordinate, implement and complete a large-scale project ahead of the Gold Award, which takes a significant amount of time, work, planning, and organization.

The Gold Award is an individual award where a Scout must work on their project for more than 80 hours (Ray logged in well over 160 hours) solely with her chosen team of experts and community members. Ray's project was an oyster upwelled, which she said is a filtration system designed to grow oyster while also filtering nitrogen and bacteria’s from Nantucket's harbors.

"The upweller is located near the hyline docks and should remain there every summer," Carley Ray said. "The gold award is all-girl led, so for the past three years I have constructed a team that has helped me complete this achievement and make this upweller a reality."

Ray earned the award in early May and said she has been working on the project since her freshman year of high school.

To receive this award, girls must be a registered Girl Scouts in grades 9-12 and completed a Girl Scout Silver Award. Crystal Ray said the girl scouts must find an issue in their community that they care about, fully research that issue, form a team of experts and community members to assist in their gold award project, analyze the issue and come up with a plan on the root cause and how they will tackle it.

“Girls must first submit a proposal to their Council that needs to be approved before they put their project in action,” Crystal Ray said. “Once approved, the Scout must lead her team and carry out the plan. During the production of the project, girls must record stats, educate community members of a variety of ages and raise funds. The final piece is a rigorous reflection report with documentation and facts on how their project was accomplished and how it will benefit the community for years to come.”

Only about 5.4 percent of eligible Girl Scouts earn the Gold Award.

“I think the reason behind this statistic is societal,” Crystal Ray said. “There comes a time when these young woman have much more going on with school, sports, and social demands of high school. Scouting is one of the first activities to be given up. After 11 years, our Troop of 10 lost all but three girls. These three remaining girls made the choice to stay with scouting and work towards their Gold Award. I also believe that Girl Scouts as a whole does not put enough work into maintaining and obtaining older girls to remain in scouting or join scouting.

"In general, no one knows about the Girl Scout Gold Award and all the time and energy that goes into working on this," Crystal Ray continued. "They think Girl Scouts – they think cookies. High School students do not want to sell cookies. Many young people want to feel heard and proud of something they have helped create. As Carley’s leader, I have seen a huge positive impact on what completing this project, that at times was long and tiresome, hitting obstacles along the way, has done to her self-awareness and self-esteem. She is walking away fully understanding determination and perseverance.”

Carley Ray will be celebrated at a small gathering June 27th, complete a Zoom presentation to the Girl Scout Council in August, and then receive her medal/pin in May of 2026 at the eastern Massachusetts gold award ceremony, as Ray just missed the March deadline for the 2025 ceremony. As of now, Ray has received a certificate and title of a Gold Awardee.

All photos courtesy of Carley and Crystal Ray.