Laguna Beach High graduate gets award to study abroad

A Laguna Beach High School alumna will study in France this fall after receiving a prestigious honor that recognized her involvement in the Girl Scouts of Orange County, according to a news release.

Josie Goson, who graduated from Laguna Beach High in 2014, was selected from among 115 applicants nationwide for the Corinne Jeannine Schillings Foundation Award. The award is given to Girl Scouts who have achieved one of the highest honors — a Silver or Gold award.

The foundation, which supports female college undergraduates in the study of languages and cultures, provided a scholarship for Goson to study abroad. The monetary value of the award is $1,000, foundation officials said.

Goson, a double major in marketing and French, will begin her junior year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas this fall.

“My desire to study abroad and go out into the world around me ultimately was fostered in Girl Scouts,” Goson said in the release. “Girl Scouts instilled in me curiosity with a thirst for knowledge — knowledge of the world, its people, and its cultures.

“I am so humbled to honor Corinne Jeannine Schillings in this semester abroad, paying respect to her memory, her passion for foreign languages, and her love for Girl Scouts.”

Schillings, a Silver Award recipient, died in 2004 at the age of 26 after the water taxi she was riding in capsized during a storm off Fort McHenry in Baltimore, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Goson earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Scouting, in 2014.

For her Gold Award project, Goson partnered with several nonprofits, including Costa Mesa-based SPIN: Serving People in Need, the Society of Orthodox Youth Organizations and Youth Equipped to Serve, on a homeless outreach project.

Volunteers crocheted mats to ease the discomfort of sleeping outside, the release said.

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Bryce Alderton, bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce