New Pack vs. Mega Pack

Tonight was School Night for Scouting in our district. I was at an
elementary school that has a pack without strong leadership. About 17 boys
showed up with parents. A couple of sincere parents, but no committments
for leadership. The SNS leader made a great presentation. Still only one
potential leader. The district wants to keep this pack on the books. (BTW,
there was no representative from chartered organization at the meeting. I
have no idea who holds the charter)

Here's the problem--the next door neighbor to the elementary school is a
church with both a pack and a troop. A 1/2 mile to the east is another
church with a great program--pack of 120 boys as of August 28, after
tonight 140+, and a troop of 160+. That's were all the boys want to
go--that's were their socceer buddies are, etc. While I feel that a pack
that size is obscene, you can't fault success, but it is hindering growth
in other packs. (In fact one scouter who was at another school has a cub
in the school I was at, but the cub is in the mega pack. This person
reported that the mega pack was adding at least 20 youth). The sponsor of
the mega pack can be perceived as a WASP church, that hinders recruiting of
disadvantaged youth. Most of the youth and parents who came to the rally
tonight were disadvantaged.

Ideally, I'd like to see the sponsor of the mega pack TDY some of its
leadship cadre (and maybe boys too) to get the elementary pack going, but
that seems to be a longshot. Perhaps some of the packs that affected by
the mega pack could be merged, using the individual schools as a basis for
dens (of course that creates a problem of where to have a pack meeting).
Heck, I'd rather see a large percentage of youth in a small number of
quality units rather than a smaller percentage of youth in poor units.

The question--what have others done in a similar situation?

Yours in Scouting,

Hank

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message
• Previous message