Vegas Scouts step up to help Maui wildfire victims, plus other good news from this week

In under 72 hours, Scouts in the Las Vegas area raised more than $8,000 in monetary and material supplies for victims of the wildfires in Maui.

It all started with 15-year-old Caleb Chargualaf and his Scoutmaster, who both have connections to the Hawaiian island. They reached out to the rest of Troop 129 and decided to find a way to help the people of Maui affected by the fires. Their efforts spread to neighboring troops and then to the entire Las Vegas Area Council. Now 200 troops and 4,300 Scouts throughout the council are working together to gather supplies to help wildfire victims.

“We want to help whoever is struggling because that is what we do as Scouts,” Caleb told 8 News Now reporters.

Read the story from 8 News Now or watch the news report below:

55 Scouts attend NYLT course in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania’s Hawk Mountain Council held its largest-ever National Youth Leadership Training course in early August. The participants spent six days at NYLT learning about teamwork, communication and leadership, according to an in-depth article in the local newspaper.

“We were able to hit 55 participants, which is record breaking for Hawk Mountain in general but also a really great accomplishment for us after having a couple of smaller years in the past,” said youth course lead and senior patrol leader Logan Westlake, 19, of Bechtelsville. “This really gets us excited because people want to come and learn. They want to do leadership.”

One participant commented that the training will help him become a better leader in his troop. Another talked about how she made great connections with other Scouts at the event.

Read more about Hawk Mountain Council’s record-breaking NYLT course in this story from the Reading Eagle.

Eagle Scout digitizes historical records

Rebecca Moberly wants to become a librarian, so she looked for an Eagle project that fit her interests. She teamed up with the historical society in her hometown of Nauvoo, Ill., to digitize burial records.

In an article in the local newspaper, it says she “fundraised for a scanner and then saved burial records which were stored in filing cabinets to digital format and typed the names and dates into a spreadsheet to make the information easily accessible to society members doing research.”

The project took about two months with 78 hours of volunteer time provided by Rebecca and others.

Read more about Rebecca’s unique project and her Scouting experience in this story from the Hancock County Journal-Pilot.