MILLSBORO — Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay has announced that home-schooled student Eleni Apostolidis has earned its highest honor, the Gold Award.

Eleni’s project, “Robotics at the Lewes Library,” gave fellow home-schooled children the opportunity to participate in a robotics competition.

The biweekly VEX IQ program Eleni designed and hosted at the Lewes Public Library allowed students to engineer, construct and program a robot completely from scratch. The robots then competed in various challenges.

The library will continue to host the course with the help of mentors and coaches from the community.

With the financial assistance of the library and other local funders — and under the guidance of her project mentor, Emily Ellinger — Eleni’s project provided hands-on opportunities to apply practical STEM concepts in real life and gave resources to engage in more STEM initiatives.

To earn the Gold Award, Eleni completed more than 80 hours of work and these steps:

• Identifying an issue in the community.
• Investigating the issue thoroughly.
• Building a team to support her efforts.
• Creating a plan to take action.
• Presenting the plan and gathering feedback.
• Taking action by leading a team to carry out the plan.
• Educating and inspiring.