A local Boy Scout from Hamilton Southeastern High School recently spearheaded a beautification project that truly can be called a community effort.

As his Eagle Scout project, 17-year-old Drew Dickerson planned and coordinated the construction of a 10,000-square-foot butterfly garden, labyrinth and outdoor learning center for The Indianapolis Lighthouse Charter School.

But this was no one-man show. The project drew help from numerous sources, all joining forces to create a massive improvement at the Lighthouse School on May 15.

• Fishers Junior High tech education students built 55 butterfly boxes and cut out butterfly wings and primed them for the art teacher to hand paint for sculptures.
• Members of Dickerson’s scout troop built three sets of small bleachers and a table for the outside learning center and moved 600 plants to the school.
• The Lighthouse Charter School students built stepping stones to pave the labyrinth.
• Lilly employees provided volunteer labor as part of the Lilly Global Day of Service.
• Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB) donated 13 trees and 400 plants to the project.
• Fishers Do-It Center donated the lumber for outside learning center construction.
• Becker Landscaping donated 36 large boulders
• Insurance Agent Doug Walker financed lumber for the butterfly boxes.

“Everybody was pretty willing to help out,” said Dickerson, a Sawgrass resident who was one of 12 Central Indiana scouts selected to work with Eli Lilly and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB) in the Lilly Global Day of Service.

With help from his mother, Betsy, Dickerson drew up a master plan, originally intended to be completed over the course of several years. He tried to follow the vision of Audrey Johnson, who had submitted the grant request to KIB on behalf of The Lighthouse Charter School.

“When he met with the school and KIB, Audrey started to cry at the extent of the design,” Betsy Dickerson said. “KIB liked it so much, they told Drew to do the entire project this year, and they would provide the plants. So his project grew from a garden to a 10,000 square-foot design!”

At the end of the day, all third grade students at The Lighthouse school were able to take home a butterfly box.

“This all came together because of one woman’s dream, Audrey Johnson,” Dickerson said at the ribbon cutting after a long day of installing plants and sculptures. “She had a dream, and this is the result of one person, one small dream. That dream grew because she told others about it, and others helped to make it grow.”

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