National Day of Unplugging
We invite all of our friends and family to join Gold Arrow Camp in participating in the National Day of Unplugging from sundown on March 3 to sundown on March 4. This time of being unplugged is a movement to encourage people to get a “24-hour respite from technology.” If you have experienced a summer at GAC then you know the importance of unplugging and connecting face-to-face, which is why we don’t allow cell phones at camp.
The National Day of Unplugging encourages people to use 24 hours free from technology to connect with “ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities.” Wow. That sounds an awful lot like camp! We love the idea of unplugging (just for a little bit) at home so that we can reforge the kind of connections there that we forge at camp, where we’re totally free from the burden of technology.
You can join us in celebrating by pledging to #unplug on social media, sharing this news story, or even planning an unplugged event with your family! You could have an old-fashioned dinner party, spend that Saturday working on puzzles or playing board games. If you need more ideas, check out the NDU 2023 Ideas List and sign up to become a FREE member!
If you have plans to unplug, please tag us in those on your social media. We’d love to share your plans (and what you did, after the fact, of course) on our social media!
Soy’s Well-Deserved Recognition
We are so lucky to have such amazing staff at Gold Arrow Camp, and every so often they are recognized for their incredible work outside of GAC. We want to take this opportunity to congratulate our very own Andy “Soy” Moeschberger on being awarded not one, not two, but three awards this year! He has worked so hard on many projects, especially legislative work to keep camps running and at the forefront of discussions amongst our political leaders. His work does not go unnoticed and we are so glad that it was noticed on a national level!
Grant Gerson Service Award – WAIC (Western Association of Independent Camps)
-The Grant Gerson WAIC Service Award pays tribute to those who make an extraordinary contribution to WAIC and to the advancement of the camp movement, and who have played an important role in the success of the association.
Southern California/Hawaii Service Award – ACA SoCal/Hawaii (American Camp Association)
-The Service Award is given as recognition to exceptional service to camping and the local area.
National Service Award – ACA (American Camp Association)
-This Service Award is designed to recognize continued and increasing service beyond the field/affiliate office level.
Strength Spotting: Becoming Your Best Self
We are excited to be able to offer some of the friendship and fun from camp in a new setting – Outschool! Gold Arrow Camp has recently become a partner organization with Outschool in order to teach our own courses on their platform. Outschool is a wonderful marketplace that offers live online classes for children. There is a variety of over 100,000 live online classes to choose from and we are thrilled to offer one of those (& hopefully many more soon)!
Our first course offering, Strength Spotting: Becoming Your Best Self, includes some of the most popular activities from our Junior Counselor workshop on character strengths and was also a well-received part of our online camp sessions last summer. Led by long-time year-round staffer and strengths guru Delta, the course helps kids identify their strengths and learn to lean into them as they navigate school, friendships, and life. It’s a one-hour course that promises to be exciting and social.
If you would like to sign up for our character strengths course, use this link to get a $20 credit toward your first Outschool enrollment. Once you sign up with Outschool, the credit will automatically be applied to your first course. Check out all of the great academic and non-academic courses offered on Outschool, and we’ll let you know when we have more of our courses available for you.
We hope to see you in one of our upcoming strengths courses!