MattR 2659 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 On 7/10/2018 at 12:38 PM, TMSM said: https://www.scouting.org/programs/boy-scouts/youth/awards/noa/ I have a scout who is close to completeing this award. How would I find out how many are awarded each year. Does the BSA publish this info? I clicked on this link and you can still buy the patches online. @UKScouterInCA , maybe someone got a bad bit of information? Link to post Share on other sites
TMSM 201 Posted June 7, 2023 Author Share Posted June 7, 2023 1 hour ago, MattR said: I clicked on this link and you can still buy the patches online. @UKScouterInCA , maybe someone got a bad bit of information? The patches are there but not the medal. Link to post Share on other sites
UKScouterInCA 45 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 You can still buy the patches online and at the Scout Store. It is just the medal that is unavailable. If they are discontinuing the award, National are not being communicative about it. Really unfair to anyone currently working towards it. Link to post Share on other sites
Eagle94-A1 2685 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 1 hour ago, UKScouterInCA said: If they are discontinuing the award, National are not being communicative about it. Really unfair to anyone currently working towards it. Sadly BSA has poor communication skills. They dropped a little used program, venture patrols, with no announcement. In 2018, they changed YP guidelines stating 18-20 year olds no longer counted towards YP supervision effective immediately in late March/early April, only to have to walk it back to September, after Summer Camp season. Only reason they changed it is because many units at the time used their 18-20 year olds as the 2nd adult in camp. And historically they have upped registration prices during the middle of Round Up season. Link to post Share on other sites
UKScouterInCA 45 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 10 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said: Sadly BSA has poor communication skills. They dropped a little used program, venture patrols, with no announcement. In 2018, they changed YP guidelines stating 18-20 year olds no longer counted towards YP supervision effective immediately in late March/early April, only to have to walk it back to September, after Summer Camp season. Only reason they changed it is because many units at the time used their 18-20 year olds as the 2nd adult in camp. And historically they have upped registration prices during the middle of Round Up season. Scouting - An amazing program that is successful because of the amazing volunteers in Troops nationwide, DESPITE the best efforts of National. 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Eagle94-A1 2685 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 1 hour ago, UKScouterInCA said: Scouting - An amazing program that is successful because of the amazing volunteers in Troops nationwide, DESPITE the best efforts of National. May I suggest this alteration? Scouting - An amazing program that is successful because of the amazing volunteers in units nationwide, DESPITE the best efforts of National. When it comes to the price increases at the last minute, Packs had it toughest in my neck of the woods because of round ups. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
AwakeEnergyScouter 246 Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 (edited) 20 hours ago, UKScouterInCA said: It's an absolute shame if they discontinue this award, the achievements a Scout needs to get to earn it are absolutely core to the mission of Scouting. I would way prefer to see a Scout earn this than every merit badge. I agree completely. It's good to explore various skills, but we scouts are primarily about being in and connecting to the outdoors. NSO awards and badges should reflect this. We're only secondarily overachievers 😉 Edited June 7, 2023 by AwakeEnergyScouter 1 Link to post Share on other sites
MattR 2659 Posted June 8, 2023 Share Posted June 8, 2023 Just because they aren't selling a medal and you can only buy a patch, why is everyone saying there's no longer an award? Maybe the bsa is trying to cut costs and simplify things. I can't fault them for that. Link to post Share on other sites
InquisitiveScouter 1653 Posted June 9, 2023 Share Posted June 9, 2023 1 hour ago, MattR said: Just because they aren't selling a medal and you can only buy a patch, why is everyone saying there's no longer an award? Maybe the bsa is trying to cut costs and simplify things. I can't fault them for that. The patch and the medal are two different awards. The patch is the National Outdoor Achievement Award (NOAA), and it has six separate areas of requirements for which you may earn a segment: Camping, Aquatics, Hiking, Riding, Adventure, and Conservation. The National Medal for Outdoor Achievement (NMOA) is much more difficult, and includes several NOAA (with devices) as requirements. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
MattR 2659 Posted June 10, 2023 Share Posted June 10, 2023 38 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said: The patch and the medal are two different awards. The patch is the National Outdoor Achievement Award (NOAA), and it has six separate areas of requirements for which you may earn a segment: Camping, Aquatics, Hiking, Riding, Adventure, and Conservation. The National Medal for Outdoor Achievement (NMOA) is much more difficult, and includes several NOAA (with devices) as requirements. Okay, so it sounds like they changed the award. It went from all or nothing with a medal to optional parts with patches and segments. If you get all the segments now how far off is that from the medal of old times? My guess is very few people were doing the entire set, kind of like that super duper environmental award you could get (with something like 3 or 5 projects). Nobody was completing it so it was dropped. I tried getting some scouts interested and that was a big fail. Scouts get eagle because their parents harp on it. More of that is not interesting to the scouts. They do the outdoor activities because it's there and they're doing it with their friends. It's not to get a medal. I've seen scouts not even bother with filling out the paperwork for the 50 miler award. I'm okay with that. They already got the memories from the trip. That's all that's really important. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
TMSM 201 Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 14 minutes ago, MattR said: Okay, so it sounds like they changed the award. It went from all or nothing with a medal to optional parts with patches and segments. If you get all the segments now how far off is that from the medal of old times? My guess is very few people were doing the entire set, kind of like that super duper environmental award you could get (with something like 3 or 5 projects). Nobody was completing it so it was dropped. I tried getting some scouts interested and that was a big fail. Scouts get eagle because their parents harp on it. More of that is not interesting to the scouts. They do the outdoor activities because it's there and they're doing it with their friends. It's not to get a medal. I've seen scouts not even bother with filling out the paperwork for the 50 miler award. I'm okay with that. They already got the memories from the trip. That's all that's really important. No, its has always been segments to get to the Medal. So nothing has changed but the availability of the medal. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Eagle94-A1 2685 Posted June 11, 2023 Share Posted June 11, 2023 A little background on the National Medal of Outdoor Achievement. In 1998 when Venturing split from Exploring, the Ranger Award was created as recognition for Venturers who essentially earned the Outdoor Bronze Award, and continued on after earning it in other areas. Ranger was an all or nothing award if memory serves because you only got the Outdoor Bronze once. Venturing and its recognition scheme was confusing for some because there already was an older Boy Scout program in troops called venture crews, and they could earn the Varsity/Venture letter, and pins to wear in the letter. Venture crews became venture patrols to try and mitigate the confusion. National knew this would happen because as early as May 1998 they were told by pros in training that confusion would result. And 20+ years later, we still here “ Venture Scout,” and “venture crew” for Venturers and Venturing Crews. You had venture crews/patrols start working on Venturing recognition, not realizing it was a completely separate program. I know one troop discovered it was a separate program after they submitted 2 or 3 Scouts for the Outdoor Bronze Award. As you can imagine, this ticked folks off. While the recognitions, Bronze, Gold, and Silver Awards, were not duplicated in Scouts ( eventually the names changed and they became ranks). The Ranger Award, was duplicated. To placate those upset, the National Medal for Outdoor Achievement was created, and to provide immediate recognition the National Outdoor Achievement Award and segments were created to show progress. Locally, I have not seen either patches or medals. So I do not know how popular they are. Link to post Share on other sites
UKScouterInCA 45 Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 According to National Scout Store, they are issuing new medals. So maybe my dream is coming true and they are replacing the old janky medal with something more impressive. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
mrjohns2 577 Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 1 hour ago, UKScouterInCA said: they are replacing the old janky medal with something more impressive My bet is that they are restocking with a new medal of equal janky’ness from a different supplier. Link to post Share on other sites
BillBelhumeur 0 Posted July 16, 2023 Share Posted July 16, 2023 Is there any further confirmation on this (that they are coming out with a new medal)? Any idea on when? thanks Link to post Share on other sites
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