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I agree with Malraux, keeping secrets, especially in regards to YP is an extremely bad idea. Further I am interested in what safety improvements . Some of the the ideas to improve Scouting that have been listed on previous threads by survivors are in place, and have been for years, and in some cases decades.

Keeping the rules we as leaders are supposed to follow secret seems like a bad idea.

Venturing has always been on life support. Fits and starts with sputtering along until the unit dies for some reason. The fact is: venturing is not a stable long-term program. Girls in troops solves much of the venturing problem. IMHO, something should be put-in-place for the 18 to 21 year old scouts. Perhaps camp volunteers or local scouting volunteers. Pull them out of units into the next volunteering level to see a broader picture. ... I'm not sure ... Just saying ... venturing has been problematic for as long as I've seen it.

You’ve not yet seen either my hair on a windy, humid day at the beach or my trifocals.

No.

SO SO SO TRUE !!!!!!! I still remember the big camp toys built from trees. That was cool and the scouts thought so too. ... I also remember the lame class room styled skills training. I wanted to leave too.

So, how should we know? Barry

If I was to design a BSA program for 18-21 y/o. I would... 1. Recognize they are adults. 2. Provide opportunities for more advanced type adventures. 3. Focus on training these adult scouts how to implement the Scout Program as designed with Patrol Method and all the other things we often describe here. #3. is best done as "campfire discussions" or "talks while hiking" instead of "classroom in the outdoors". The training should be explicitly known but implicitly executed. In general the outcomes should be "outdoor fun with similar aged adults" and "training future Scou

How should we know? Is it in training? Is district sending leaders information? Do you have a source? Barry

While I know folks will do stupid things, including those over 21, I would still like to see the raw data to analyze this information.

This discussion made me think of a Scouting "political cartoon" that I saw before, but can't find. It was a "two cell" cartoon with "What they were told Scouting would be" and then the other "What Scouting is". It showed adventure in the outdoors on one side and a meeting in a Church basement on the other. I seem to recall this might have been British. I would love to have a copy if someone knows it and can post a link.

How silly of me. My apologies for even suggesting that you stoop so low as to bring in the one who's job it is to work with units. Never mind that it is just a lowly, recent college grad without J.D. or an attorney's license. With your training & education, sounds like you should have it all figured out. With such an attitude towards DEs, why-oh-why would you come on the forum for any advice from any of us? I mean, there's no telling what level of education any of us have. There may be some on here who have not even graduated college (gasp!!) What an arrogant post that was. And some

I can’t say what is hurting scout membership today because there are to many new variables with adding girls, bankruptcy, and COVID. But, 10 years ago I could show the biggest membership killer in the BSA was the Cubscout program. Less than 30% of Tigers end up joining a troop. While I believe National has made some bad policy decisions on the troop program over the last 30 years, the program over all doesn’t have big membership drops after a scouts first year. While history does show some troop membership drops, the number is difficult to analysis because much of the drop is mostly refle

At an Eagle Court of Honor years ago, just as I was about to speak, as I looked across the audience assembled for the 3 Eagle Scouts, it struck me that the majority of folks there were not active in Scouting and likely had no inkling of the number of requirements the Eagles had completed, the range of skills and topics those requirements spanned, the years it took to do so, and even more telling, the vast number of campouts and meetings each Eagle had attended to complete just a requirement or two. As it is our Troop's practice to provide each Eagle with a 3 ring binder with an extensive

Give up on scouting then maybe, not getting kids off their phones or outside. Kid participation in a lot of outdoor activities is way up -- fishing, birding, horseback riding, organized biking. The scouting program in some ways and in some places has become an impediment to getting kids outdoors. And phones and devices are not all bad. There are apps and features that can be fun to use outdoors. Edit: For example, I'm doing Cornell's Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend with my teenage son. He's using Merlin on his phone; I'm reporting via ebird. This is the kind of outdoors thing he l

And the irony is this isn't a very elegant way to help But getting back to the OP, @5thGenTexan, I wonder if the approach used in Let Grow might really help a pack. The age range is similar. I think the basic idea is get a bunch of stuff, let them figure out how to play with it and only step in if it really is a safety issue (or maybe an opportunity to talk about the scout law as it pertains to a specific incident). If some scouts want to make skits then that's their program for the meeting while others do something else. I suppose adults could also be there to help with an activity pin,

Yeah, you can find experts on the internet, though. You can also find people posing as experts. You can learn a lot, including footwear reviews, from the king of backpacking, Andrew Skurka on his website, www.andrewskurka.com He also has a video on YouTube for selecting 5 star campsites and one of my favorite parts is him saying don't pick a spot a Boy Scout troop would take. He gives a good explanation why. r/Ultralight on Reddit is another good place for getting advice.

Exactly...we had two Scouts "team up" to do a local project like this at a place of worship. One did the benches and the other did the raised stage and rostrum. The projects were complementary and were done at separate times. One Scout (the stage and rostrum) won the ESSP of the Year locally... A few observations: 1) Wrong focus: It is not about the project!!! It's about the growth of the young person. Use any and all of these situations for growth and learning how to deal with setbacks and competition. Teach him to look for the win-win instead of the win-lose. See #2. 2)

As a scout leader you should know by now of The Coalition.Its a group of Scouts that are Leading in the next stages of Safer Scouting for the Youth

I do indeed but I will keep it confidential for the safety of the youth scouts. This coalition will be Stern,Vigilant and will not continue to let this nonsense continue