Kristian

the primary purpose at least around here is solely free labor from both the scouts and scouters. as a scouter you also would be valued for your ability to drive, be over 18 ---> legally able to use more powetools and such, and of course donate your trade skills. electricians, roofers, cooks, carpenters etc. OA isnt about being an honor society or a sign of a competent outdoorsman. camping will likely be no more difficult than first year cub car camping.

You omitted a third option. A national policy that requires units to present homosexuality as an example of morally straight to all of our you.

if this change is enacted i do hope that they all join the AHB then they can continue to partner with the AHG and will never ever have to be subject to their policies.

8.0.0.4 Wearing the Uniformor Neat in Appearance

It is preferred a Scout be in full field uniform for any

board of review. He should wear as much of it as he

owns, and it should be as correct as possible, with the

badges worn properly. It may be the uniform as the

members of his troop, team, crew, or ship wear it.

If wearing all or part of the uniform is impractical for

whatever reason, the candidate should be clean and

neat in his appearance and dressed appropriately,

according to his means, for the milestone marked by

the occasion. Regardless of unit expectations or rules,

boards of review may not reject candidates dressed to

this description; neither may they require the purchase

of uniforming, or clothing such as coats and ties.(This message has been edited by kristian)

iols is partly the expectation that a new scout leader is going to be able to complete all the scout skills in one or 2 days. At least from my experience the vast majority of this course is simply a lecture. you will simply not have the time or manpower to teach lets say 40 people everything that a scout actually should know in this time frame. Just learning a single type of lash might take 20 mins and there are several. so the teachers will shortcut and these leaders will never really get a mastery of skills which is absolutely essential if they ever expect to teach anything to the troop.

the most visible example i normally see of a failure to actual learn something with advancement is also the fire building. building a cooking fire from scratch with natural materials is a skill which will take a significant amount of time to learn especially when you need to light it in the rain or snow. (real world conditions)

actually at least according to movie lincon was testing the waters with the emancipation proclamation. it wasn't until the the 13th amendment the slavery really ended throughout the country.

i like most others was absolutely stunned today that national was actually considering this. knowing that the lds controls the board and national this is the most positive thing to come out of bsa in years. i can only hope that those who disagree with the bsa policy can finally vote for equality without being ostracized.

if you feel the need to never be around gay people then you will never truly experience the real world. As for tenting, well no one is ever forced to tent with anyone else be they gay, straight, woman, man. Your tent mate is only the decision between those actually sleeping there any no one else.

"Way to much paperwork. Can't we use common sense? "

Not the in current BSA. Remember this is the bureaucracy scouts of America. Where an overwhelming percentage of the program is now indoors. As more and more information necessary for a successful outdoor experience leaves the scout handbook and ever more rules are added to the g2ss and even more paperwork becomes required to go on a simple trip.

#1 committed a battery against #3 (misdemeanor)

#3 was justified in threatening #1 as self defense

hopefully you reminded them they really shouldn't act this way. though from the way this sounds if they still get along fine, and no real harm was done any further action will only make things worse for everyone involved.

Disappointing. Perhaps it would be a good idea for the scouts to have their own mini version of antiques roadshow or something. Surely there are enough collectors who have items unique enough, and rare enough to interest others.

A couple of posters..... not worthy of a blog post. The original paintings maybe.

no. BSA has repeatedly stated its opposition to diversity.

However the Diversity/inclusiveness badge for scout uniform wear can be purchased

http://www.inclusivescouting.net/store/orders/

and

http://www.scoutingforall.org/data/layer02/store.html

the first link it costs 1.00 and the second 5.00 in single unit cost

sad. This is not the type of "Camping" BP would be promoting.

Just one example of one of the hundreds of pro scouters who are criminals and or have lawsuits against them. Time to just eliminate them all and return the organization to the volunteers.

Having the knowledge to actually run and then using this knowledge on the pack, troop, council etc level IS pretty much a full time job. Knowing how to navigate the sea of boy scout paperwork and who needs to be contacted for any particular thing is something that will take thousands of hours and likely several years at least. That scouter with a table full of paperwork yes can be viewed as somewhat of an extremist by those who haven't gotten truly involved yet but that paperwork mountain and experience is incredibly helpful in a successful program and navigating the red tape.

That serious scouter likely would have at least some experience at least reading all the scouting handbooks, field books and other guides available. would be able to offer suggestions of all the awards at the different program levels and have the knowledge to plan a much wider breadth of activities and locations that could be advised upon by council.

Look upon those who have clearly dedicated their life to scouting as at least passionate in a cause they believe in. There will always be those who dedicate a shockingly large amount of time to scouting. I can think of 2 who spend well over 40hrs week and probably 10 or so positions/roles each but its these types I admire. The bsa program really does lend itself to be something you can continue getting more and more involved in to where you just cant help going to one more training, university of scouting or a pilgrimage to philmont for something there. As long as these scouters don't cross the line to pro they likely will turn out ok.

Training for adult volunteers --- leaders pay out of pocket, can cost over 1k in a year. some councils make money off this

Leadership training and advancement programs --- scouts or troop pay out of pocket, run entirely by volunteers

New unit organization -- founding leader typically pays all initial start up costs out of pocket

Recruiting activities --- also known as fund raising activities

Program publications --- purchased individually at the scout shop. ideally should be entirely online

Communications --- couple emails a year from each council/district

Maintenance of our Scout Camps ---- self supporting through camp fees, oa volunteer work, directed donations

Program Materials --- have never seen any council pay for a single page of anything many scouts are encouraged to buy

Records processing --- seriously? either managed by the unit for the scouts or completely lost

Clerical staff -- responsible for failure to enter records, duplicate or wrong entries. serve no useful purpose

Telephone and office equipment -- i dont even want to think about how much council is additionally requesting each year for this

Other related costs to support the entire program --- are paid for by the members (scouts and scouters)

i will never again participate in "fund our salaries"

He really isnt a part of you troop simple as that so No Conference, NO Board of review and NO POR. There are actual requirements for ranks. really. And a scout who has never actually shown up will not be able to complete anything.

Defining and actually enforcing the active requirement is whats going to help here. A certain percentage of meetings as well as outings should be required. Getting the troop committee on board is also essential though in some cases hasn't helped solve this problem.

Just be sure to not wait years to address this or this mother will be coming to you asking to sign the eagle app or some other document with por's completed with her cub pack and all things done without ever stepping foot at a troop meeting.

Getting local scouts to come in and really discus previous seabase trips will certainly help. Making sure to really think about whether the scouts are really interested in any particular type of trip and what they would want to do.

Also this trip is likely a year and a half away. Yes you might desire to reserve this far in advance in order to get a choice week but many scouts simply don't plan this far in advance. Interests change in over a year some will likely not longer be in the troop at that point. Concentrate on what you are doing for this summer first and then bring up future plans in those planning meetings and at troop meetings.

there is no one pc enough for Irving that scouts also would look up to. nationals view of scouting simply doesn't match with what an actual outdoorsman would want. all you really can expect from them is another corporate scouter gradually reducing any of the skills once taught.

Its not really the amount of the registration fee which really isn't an unaffordable number but rather that there is one at all. Anyone who goes through this process every year knows just getting any amount of money out of people is a challenge and in some units takes months.

What I believe is that most people simply don't get any benefits from giving national this money. Their units certainly get no benefit, none of this money goes to unit camping/activity fees. For the occasional scout/leader who may attend one or 2 events a year they simply get to be subjected to fees they don't want and an onerous amount of paperwork.

There certainly are alternatives to this flawed bsa system. Many of the meetup groups I attend have no fees, and zero paperwork. And some of the national outdoor organizations i belong to require a small payment similar to this mainly to afford the group mailings.

Yes eliminating the annual recharter mess will allow in some who are less committed to attend program functions, but at least then there is no barrier to entry or exit.

" skills, competencies and experience"

3 things that BSA really doesn't care for. BSA training for adults for the most part is just a attendance based training. I remember from my IOLS, fundamentals courses all you really needed to do was sit through the several days of lectures. No effort at any time was made to ensure anyone actually gained competence in anything. They were likely following the "not adding to requirements" philosophy some of us have in eliminating any true mastery of skill which i believe should always be the goal.

As long as there is no real requirement that the adult leaders have the skills to actually do every single scout requirement perfectly themselves how can you expect the scouts to ever learn those skills. Without solid adult skills to teach the plc who will then be able to teach the younger scouts it just leads to a failure of the scouting program.

Offering the test out option is certainly be an option I wish more councils would embrace. Many here would agree that it is an onerous requirement to have to give up one or 2 weekends, and travel hundreds of miles to sit though some adults telling you about various skills you likely did a better job with your own troop in the months before. But sadly many councils make this training and others a requirement no matter how many people say they learned absolutely nothing from it.

Possibly if the BSA eliminated all those paid professionals who seem more concerned with raising money to afford there salaries, benefits, and offices we would be left with only the volunteers who seem to be actually valued in the UK. Then maybe the organizations decisions can be made solely in the interest in the scouts and scouters who want to put on the best program possible.

I have no doubt that adults would do quite a bit for another patch, knot, award etc. However I firmly believe that the primary draw to get adults to attend or a scout to attend should be the strength and desire of the program. While its certainly acceptable according to BSA to award patches for every single event or meeting these mostly attendance based badges devalue at least in some peoples eyes truly difficult accomplishments.

Having uniforms cluttered up with jambo patches, temp patches, sometimes a dozen or more arch shaped segments around the temp patch, recruiter patches, oa patches, rows and rows of knots, ranks, positions, medals, cords, shoulder loops etc ---- well that's really just showing off and not how the uniform was originally intended to look.

The only one the system be it BSA or otherwise is really designed to protect is the system itself.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-03/news/31283027_1_child-abuse-social-services-alyssa

clearly governments should not be organizing scout events themselves.

and in general i disagree completely with this system of organization which is essentially a merit badge fair. doing badges this way cuts out an important step of the merit badge process - namely actual responsibility of the scout, and the quality of instruction in many instances is lacking the ability to ensure every single scout fully understands and completes all the material and requirements.

lol - your complete lack of understanding of what happens in the real world astounds me.

anyone else wondering how long it would take seattle to eliminate every single scout/scouter in the bsa if he was sent from troop to troop?