When a local hospice program and Girl Scout council compare maps of their service areas, an almost exact replica is revealed.

The mirror image was taken one step further when Jolene Formaini, a nurse and bereavement coordinator with the Visiting Nurses Association of Western Pennsylvania, began to pinpoint ways in which the two groups could work together.

The result was Sharing Lives, Sharing Love, a program that allows girls in the Keystone Tall Tree Girl Scout Council to collaborate on projects with hospice patients.

The projects, usually done over several visits, can include making a collage or scrapbook; compiling a book about the patient's life history; compiling information about the patient's family background and traditions; or throwing a special party.

The goal is to help the patients reflect on their lives while teaching teens and preteens about coping with loss.

The project originated in 2004, when Formaini tried to meet the needs of a lonely patient.

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We had a patient in a nursing home, and the nurses kept coming to our team meetings," she said about a staff effort to meet the woman's need for companionship. "They thought she liked kids," Formaini added.

The SLSL program was launched after Formaini explored the Girl Scouts' adopt a grandparent program, deciding it was inappropriate because the woman's illness was terminal.

Formaini and the Girl Scout council spent the next year designing a program that would allow meaningful interaction without the goal of long-term attachment.

The most recent project, a party at the Saxony Health Center in Saxonburg, was done with Barbara Zimmerman, 64, a resident who was diagnosed in 1970 with multiple sclerosis.

"I want to thank each and every one of you for making today possible," said Zimmerman after a balloon party recently at the skilled nursing facility.

As part of the party, Saxony residents played balloon volleyball, did a craft activity and sang "God Bless America" with the help of Troop 491, whose members are in sixth grade and older.

Somewhat subdued when first wheeling their chairs up to the party table, many of the residents seemed to perk up by singing and by the competition of volleying balloons across the table.

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I think in Barbara's case, because she has been handicapped for so many years, the recurrent theme was that she felt helpless - that she just couldn't do anything for anyone else," Formaini said of Zimmerman's request to host a party.

"The project has to have meaning for the patient. Most of the project is designed to take the patient through a process of life review. That did happen actually with Barbara," Formaini noted of Zimmerman's reminiscence about being a Girl Scout in her youth.

"It really is supposed to be not one-sided. It is supposed to be literally sharing your life both ways."

As well as gaining some knowledge of Zimmerman, the Scouts gained an up-close view of the elderly - a new experience for many in the group.

"I think it gives them a different perspective," said Sandy Gadzia, director of membership for the Girl Scout council. "I don't know how much contact these girls have with people (in the older) generation."

Megan Schorr, 12, of Penn Township was among several who said the troop had participated in service projects like pulling weeds, cleaning ovens and making gifts for senior citizens - but those projects often included minimal interaction.

"This is a twofold thing," Formaini explained of the pilot program, which she hopes can eventually be adapted for use by other Scout councils.

"It was really to help our patients, but I also am very committed to getting children through loss - to get them exposed to situations where a patient will eventually die and to be able to support (the Scouts) though that and teach them through that."

To help ensure a positive experience for the Girl Scouts, Formaini uses a set of criteria to screen potential seniors.

To qualify, seniors must be alert and oriented, be interested in children and teens, be free of infection, be living with managed symptoms, and have a prognosis of months or longer so that projects can be completed.