It's an award that most local Girl Guides have never heard of, yet the highest honour they can receive. Now the winner of the Baden-Powell Award wants to encourage other girl scouts to get it too.

Fifteen-year-old Sarah Hopkin worked tirelessly for 18 months on projects, including planting cedar trees at Ferry Reach and teaching her fellow Guides about human rights issues. She had a goal in mind: to complete 10 special projects and a challenge so she would one day be awarded the Baden-Powell Award, the highest accolade for the Guides. "It's nice to know that all my hard work paid off. And that I could complete it and that I didn't have to give up," Miss Hopkin told The Royal Gazette about the award, named in honour of one of the original founders of the Girl Guides, Agnes Baden-Powell.

The Bermuda High School student was given the special award by Lady Gozney at a ceremony at Government House. The award is only given out every two to three years in Bermuda, and awarded to only one in 750 Girl Guides internationally each year.

Miss Hopkin said: "Not very many people in Bermuda do it because they haven't heard about it. But if they did I think more people would get it."

In fact Miss Hopkin admits she only stumbled upon the award by chance. "I was reading through one of my books and thought it looked interesting and wanted to find out more. "There was lots of opportunities and challenges I wanted to see if I could do it," she added. From that day she tried to gather more information and slowly started to fulfil her goal. In addition to her normal Guiding activities like camping and community work, she spent hours putting together a camp cookbook (to assist her Guide unit with all their cooking needs) and prepared a presentation on contemporary fashion. She also worked hard to earn more badges like the agility and fitness badge.

"Once I started I didn't really want to give up," Miss Hopkin said.

But she admits she didn't do it alone either. Throughout the past year Miss Hopkin had support from Denise Woodhouse, the Island Commissioner for Girlguiding Bermuda, whom she calls 'Woody".

"Ms Woodhouse has been very energetic and helped me to keep on working at it," she said. "And so has my Guide leader Alex Crampton. She has been at every Guide meeting asking me 'how are you getting on' and making sure that I do everything correctly, and providing time for me to do everything I need within my guide meeting."

Though there was certainly challenges involved, she admits she had some fun as well. "There were lots of interesting things to learn about and do. I've never planted trees before, that was fun," she said.

Miss Hopkin got her start in the Girl Guides in Bermuda in 2006 and before that she was a member of Somerset Brownie Pack. Currently she is a Young Leader with the 1st Pembroke Brownies and plans to start her Queen's Guide Award next year when she turns 16. That award is only attained by one in 100 Guides.

She will also be representing Girlguiding Bermuda next year on one of its two international trips. Girlguiding Bermuda was founded in 1921 and since its inception has been encouraging young girls to get involved with travel, community action projects, camping and sports. The group accommodates girls as young as 5 in their Rainbow Division and as old as 25 in their Rangers Division. To find out more information or how to get involved with the group contact Carol Hall on 292-0675 or by email on girlguides@northrock.bm.