On Their Honor: Burlington Welcomes a New Generation of Top Scouts
From a children's book about deforestation to a food pantry shelf at the library, Burlington's newest Eagle Scouts and Gold Award recipients left their mark before they left for college.
Some teens view community service as a graduation requirement. For five Burlington graduates in the Class of 2026, it’s something else entirely — a calling that took years of work, dedication, and more than a little courage to answer.
When Eiko Coram set out to do her final project for the Girl Scouts, she already had a decade of scouting under her belt. She’d earned a Bronze Award for organizing donations for a cat shelter, a Silver Award for recording mental health Public Service Announcements with Burlington Cable Access Television, and organized a sustainable farming cookout as a part of her journey. But when the time came to earn her Gold Award, she ran into an unexpected challenge.
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After starting her project she found that her plan, which involved therapy dogs in schools, wasn’t right for her. “The need was already being fulfilled,” she said. For this reason and others, Coram decided this project wasn’t going to work.
It would have been easy to give up. But Coram instead looked inward, finding a new project that combined two true passions: art and conservation.
“With a small team, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book on the negative effects of deforestation,” said Coram, “as a way to raise awareness and encourage education on the topic.” She and her team created and self-published Ms. Magpie’s Forest, which follows animal characters that each represent a different biological consequence of tree removal. One storyline, she said, was inspired by a trip she took with the Girl Scouts to Yellowstone National Park, where she learned about the essential role of wolves in that ecosystem.
Coram read the book aloud at various area engagements, and a copy is available in each elementary school library in Burlington. “The kids loved it and the teachers told me they had never seen the kids so engaged,” said Coram, who received her Gold Award this summer and is now studying art in college.
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While Coram’s project endeavored to raise awareness about a global issue, Christopher Peckham and Giovanni Doiron kept their Eagle Scout projects hyperlocal.
Peckham and Doiron both said the work they’d done during their time as Boy Scouts prepared them for the Eagle project – but more than that, the skills they built prepared them for life beyond high school. Doiron said throughout his time in the Scouts the adults in the program acted as advisors and let the Scouts take charge of planning meetings and outings, and those skills transferred to his project, where he led a team of Scouts and other community members in building raised garden beds for the Burlington High School Arbor Club.
“These opportunities allowed me to work on my planning, instruction, communication, and teamwork skills for many years before working on my project,” said Doiron. As for why he chose this particular project, Doiron said he wanted to pair the academic study of plants with the stress relief benefits of gardening.
Peckham agrees that scouting, and this project in particular, helped him develop his project and people management skills – skills that will certainly help him as he begins his studies in mechanical engineering.
Peckham collaborated with community members to build a new shelf for the Burlington Public Library’s micro food pantry. “I’ve been involved with the food pantry for quite a while and working in the community garden every summer,” Peckham said, “so I just wanted to do something that would help the community.”
Coram, Peckham, and Doiron aren’t the only dedicated grads who earned top Scouting honors this year. Meghna Dinesh earned her Gold Award for a project that empowered young women to pursue opportunities in foreign policy and international affairs, and Mehran Khaleel earned the rank of Eagle Scout for his project to install bat boxes and enhanced wayfinding markers at Sawmill Conservation Area.
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For all five, the path to their awards was long — years of meetings, projects, and service that built not just skills but character. “You’re never alone whenever you’re facing challenges or obstacles,” said Doiron, adding that the Scouts were the most tight-knit and supportive group he had even been a part of. “Stick with it,” says Peckham.
Both are sentiments Coram would recognize. “Your voice matters,” she said. “No matter how small you may feel, there are people and places and ways where your voice can be heard — if you’re only willing to go out and look for it.”
Note: In the magazine version of this article, Mehran Khaleel's last name was misspelled. We regret the error.
