Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania is honored to announce Nora Betts, a student at Holy Cross High School, has earned the highest award in Girl Scouting, the Girl Scout Gold Award, for the 2023 Gold Award class.
Betts’ project, “Bat Boxes: Installation and Education,” focused on addressing a lack of public education and understanding of the importance of bat populations in our environment.
Betts helped educate others of how bats benefit our environment and worked to eliminate stigmas and fears surrounding bats. To address the issue, she built four bat boxes to give the creatures a safe dwelling and designed an educational sign about bats and bat boxes.
She partnered with the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Association to complete the project. Her project’s mission will continue through the sign’s permanent installment along a trail and the sustainability of the bat boxes that can last for decades.
Betts devoted a minimum of 80 hours to problem-solve, plan and implement her ideas for change. The impact of her Gold Award project will be felt long into the future, and Betts has shown the next generation of girls what they are capable of accomplishing.
The Gold Award is the highest achievement a Girl Scout can earn, available to girls in high school who create sustainable change for a community or world issue. Gold Award Girl Scouts address pressing issues in their communities and create sustainable change to make the world a better place.
The Gold Award process not only enables girls to help their communities, but also provides tangible benefits as they grow as individuals. By going Gold, girls build professional skills, earn scholarships, build their network, and for those interested in serving their country, are able to enlist at a higher pay grade when they join the military.
Supporters of Camp Archbald (SoCA) will be hosting the third annual all-volunteer-run resident camp for girls at Camp Archbald, the second-oldest Girl Scout camp in the United States. This year, camp will celebrate 100 years of continuous operation in Northeast Pennsylvania. 
Camp Archbald has been offering sleep-away camping to girls for the past 98 years. This semi-rustic camp, located on the shores of the picturesque Lake Ely near Kingsley in Susquehanna County, is steeped in tradition with modern additions – a new dining hall, a water slide, and the immensely popular climbing wall and zip-line.