WESTON - On Oct. 13, the Weston Scout House sparkled with gold and silver decorations. Girl Scouts young and old, families, friends and dignitaries gathered to honor Dana Bullister of Wellesley College and a 2008 graduate of Weston High School, and Mary Wells, a senior at Weston High, with the Girl Scout USA highest achievement, the Gold Award.

At the same ceremony, the Girl Scouts’ Silver Award was presented to seven high school sophomores – Alexandra Clark of Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, and Clare Devlin, Molly Dillaway, Sarah Ober, Allyson Pemberton, Kristen Richard and Kristi Wagner, all of Weston High School.

The Gold Award, established in 1980, is the highest honor a Girl Scout can earn. Only seven Weston Girl Scouts have earned the coveted Gold Award, and only 5.4 percent of Girl Scouts nationwide receive it.

The Gold Award requires earning preliminary badges and logging 30 hours in leadership positions and another 40 hours in career exploration before designing and carrying out a unique service project that is the culmination of one’s Girl Scout experience.

The Silver Award, also established in 1980, requires similar preliminary skill building and 40 hours of community service.

Dana Bullister’s project was teaching basic computer skills to children ages 7 to 13 at the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House in Cambridge. This project incorporated her two passions of design and art by designing a program to teach the children to make power points and do WordArt.

Her troop leader Laura Pendergast says, "She was always the artistic one. She was the one the girls turned to when faced with an art project such as designing posters or T-shirts."

Aided by friends and classmates Kelly Pendergast and Jeff and Eric Stix, she taught new skills to the children at the Margaret Fuller House, and left behind a curriculum to use in years to come.

Mary Wells’ project built on her artistic talent and passion. She painted bright colored maps of the world on the playgrounds at Weston’s Country and Woodland elementary schools.

Created with the help of friends and elementary school students, these murals are admired by all visitors and will become the setting for geography lessons and games.

This Gold Award was Mary Wells’ third Girl Scout honor; she is the first Weston Girl Scout to earn the Bronze, Silver and Gold awards.

With the support of Weston’s Department of Public Works and town engineer Stephen Fogg, the project for the Silver Award involved conducting a shoreline survey of Hobbs Brook, sending findings to the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA) for analysis, and marking storm drains around Weston with "No Dumping – Drains to Waterways" decals.

In the process, the scouts learned about stormwater and themselves.

"It taught us time management," says Allyson Pemberton, "We all had busy schedules and having to work meetings and surveys into seven different, busy lives was a good lesson."

There were several distinguished guests in attendance including State Rep. Alice Hanlon Peisch, D-Wellesley, who presented State House resolutions to the Gold Award honorees and State House citations to the Silver Award honorees.

Ruth Bramson, the new CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts (GSEM), presented the Gold Award pin and certificates on behalf of GSEM and Girl Scouts USA, plus many letters of recognition from the White House, all of the Armed Forces, and government agencies like the Department of Wildlife.

After the pins and certificates were awarded to the girls, everyone present joined hands in a friendship circle, and sang a familiar Girl Scout song, "Make new friends, and keep the old; one is silver and the other’s gold."