AT just 16 years old, Singleton's Grace Russell is the youngest Girl Guide to be honoured with the 2023 Queen's Guide Award.
She has been working towards the prestigious distinction since she was 10, just three years after she joined the Girls Guide unit at Branxton.
"The desire to get the award came about when of our leader's daughters who I was good friends with, had started to work on hers, and that kind of inspired me to start doing mine," she said.
The Queen's Guide award is broken down into two parts - the Gold Endeavour Award and challenges focused on organising and leading.
The challenges for each part are built around six different skill areas including creative thinking, collaboration, communication, character, community and commitment to learning.
"I picked leadership as my main focus and wanted to work with kids and give back to Branxton and as much as I could," Ms Russell said.
The now junior Girl Guides leader received her recent accolade on September 2 at a ceremony at Government House in Sydney where she met the NSW Governor General Margaret Beazley.
"It was amazing in so many ways. We met the governor of New South Wales which was an experience in itself," she said.
"And it was amazing just to be able to see other women that had also completed the award."
Ms Russell was the youngest of the recipients with the others all 18 years-old.
"That definitely made me feel empowered and proud of myself for getting that done," she said.
Ms Russell said she joined Girl Guides initially for a social aspect but says it has enriched her life in so many ways.
"I was quite a shy kid from a fairly small school. Guides has taught me a lot of confidence, as well as life skills like camping, knotting, canoeing, outdoor cooking - things which I probably wouldn't know if I wasn't in Guides," she said.
The Australian Christain College student hopes to inspire other young girls to follow in her footsteps.
"I'd love to see other girls do it. It's definitely helped me on my career path. I'd like to start in education support and go into teaching later on."
Her mum Louise Russell said she was proud of her daughter, who wanted to get her Queen's Award prior to commencing her senior studies at school.
"She always had a plan to have it done this year because we were discussing that it would affect year 11 and 12, so for her to be able to achieve that has been amazing," she said.
