Leaderboard

"Why in the modern day are we so attached to symbols and traditions from another century when we have a rich scouting history of our own to draw upon? " Among the mythology of early America are the stories about new settlers from Europe learning from the indigenous American peoples how to survive in the wilderness of North America. It shows up in the stories of "The First Thanksgiving", and in a lot of American literature set during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Since many of the skills taught in scouting involve outdoor survival, it makes sense to acknowledge the lessons learned by

Why do we need a National Council? It takes so much money and you do not see much at the local level. Replace it with a board of SE from each council who make and vote on standards. That is really all that matters is minimum standards across the county. With technology meetings could be zoom with a yearly in person. Have separate sub committees for projects. All LC would have a say in the BSA and its future. HAB could be turned over to LC or form a separate non profit for each. They make money and can be self sustained. We could make Scouting much more affordable for all.

Here are a couple of interesting articles on Native American connections to scouting. I've seen them before but there are some points covered that seem relevant to some of the discussions here, especially those raised by the Lenni Lenape pastor. While some of the examples included in these articles are more archival, there are a lot of other clips and examples that are current within the past few years. I think one of the key points that the pastor makes, which was what I was driving at in one of my posts, is that even without a religious ceremonial connection, in his opinion, we are allowing

I have spent my career in not-for-profit management at the local and regional level. The organizations included Goodwill, Easter Seals and Volunteers of America. All of them used a very similar model to the BSA of a national organization providing charters to local affiliates. Coincidentally, all were formed in approximately the same time period and this was the model that was being used at that time. At its best, a strong national organization provides a variety of functions and services that would be very difficult for a local affiliate or collection of affiliates to replicate on t

Small incident with my scouts last night that really made me smile. we had an evening punting on the river in Cambridge. For those unfamiliar it’s peculiar to Cambridge and Oxford and a handful of other places with shallow rivers. Anyway as we could only put 5 scouts on each punt it didn’t quite work out as punting in patrols. So we asked the scouts to organise themselves into groups of 5. So far so good. But we’ve got that one scout who is a bit of an outsider. Goes to a different school to the rest, comes into scouts from quite a long way out. Doesn’t fit in quite