qwazse

I would rather hear from Johnny Red after he put in a few months trying ... telling us how he got 'er done, or didn't.

Never let the poor behavior of a few overshadow the good of the many.

I already discussed the qualifications of the average DAC/CAC. Seriously, give yours a call and find out how prepared they are to rule on the particulars of venturing awards, or, if they would rather defer to a venturing committee or VOA. Here is the quote in full regarding "ensuring advancement reports" from crew committee challenge (http://www.scouting.org/filestore/training/pdf/511-902_WB.pdf page 15) omitting references to boy scout advancement and my emphasis underlined): Recognition Explain that if any of the participants have been on a troop committee, they will remember that maintaining advancement records, arranging boards of review, and conducting courts of honor were the responsibilities of the committee. Point out that in Venturing, the responsibility for recognition falls to the crew leaders and Advisors. There are no ranks in Venturing, but there are awards that Venturers may earn. While the crew committee does not take an active role in awards and may or may not have a person assigned specifically to awards, the committee still has a supporting function in ensuring the crew’s program offers youth the opportunity for recognition. Ask participants how the crew committee might do this. Answers may include: Cooperate with the crew Advisors on supporting goals for the crew. Work together with the crew Advisors to ensure the youth are recognized properly and promptly for their achievements. Provide expertise for consultants for Venturing awards. Serve on crew reviews for appropriate Venturing awards and boards of review ... when asked. Ensure advancement reports are submitted to the local council. Help the crew’s leaders secure the awards and certificates. From, this, I conclude that the committee serves as mail-clerk, not referee. Resolving disputes over syntax happens only at the pleasure of the youth leadership. Rest assured, I'm not harping on this to be picky. It stems from about the only lesson that I've learned over the past 12 years as an advisor: It is profoundly demoralizing for youth to realize that -- by the book -- something that should be in their purview has been co-opted by an adult. Don't let that happen in your crew.

I had two experiences with different people on a family vacation in Rocky Mt. National Park. The first was on a drive back down from Pike's Peak when two of us stopped to look for a geocache, one person felt two sick to come out of the car, and another person stayed with him while he rested. The first person was fine on the second day, but that was within 24 hours of when the second victim arrived. We hiked up to the continental divide (about 12K ft) and being an MD and an avid runner and having grown up hiking the high Sierras, he was starting to panic about how he felt. We were hitting our turn-around time so it made sense just to walk back down and monitor things. It's amazing what a difference less than 2K ft makes! Good thing, too. His 11 yo daughter needed a piggy back out for the last 6 miles! We don't know the details of this story, but I can understand how intimidating it might be to move camp down-slope just before nightfall. If you never experienced seeing someone recover quickly at lower altitude, you might not believe the benefit is worth the risk.

Again, this boils down to the mission and vision of a particular crew. Crew 123 may envision itself as raising up staff for Camporees and Jamborees (both girl- and boy- scout). Therefore, they may put these events as crew activities through which service is delivered and time helping old ladies across the street as service delivered personally. Meanwhile, Crew 124 may envision itself as making sure old ladies safely traverse boulevards that have cordoned off their community. Therefore, they may mark old lady migration assistance days as crew activities, and going off to staff a scouting event at the standard volunteer rate as service delivered personally. I know, scouting is rife with absolutists -- thanks to the rigid Boy Scout requirements and narrower range of activities, but Venturing is situational. (Or, as I say to new advisors, you're in for a wild ride.) Thus, I re-emphasize, for the sake of every advisor who is beleaguered by envious helicopter parents: tell your committee to follow the rules, butt out of advancement particulars, support the youth's program, do not dictate it! There are more important things for committee's to do. (E.g., finding knowledgeable consultants regarding over-boulevard zip-line harness/helmet combos suitable for little old ladies on shopping day.)

Scouting: not just a natural high.

Well, then, lock all the men who you trust in a room, and tell them to figure out who is going to trade paycheck for smiles. Maybe it will be one of the male guardians who comes to the GSUSA recruiting table. Good luck to you.

Really? "quite well"? If "quite well" means fastest decline of all divisions, then it's no wonder BSA machinates over unpopular programs.

This is why millennial is a misnomer, and I prefer post-modern nomadic. It used to be if you got a new job 20 miles away, you up and relocated family to live within walking distance of the job. Now, committing hours a day to commuting past lots of places you wouldn't dare live is the norm.

I find all the marketing mumbo-jumbo nauseating. It's delusional to consider a Cubbette program without considering one thing: Cubs grow up and crossover onto a troop. So what would Cubbettes cross over to? Boyettes? Even burka-laden Saudis would think that stupid. I also find the paranoia about losing the "single sex safe space" overblown. However, I like you guys, and would rather not have your boys lose you on account of this. I'd rather them spend time with tons of co-Ed scouts from all over the world and put a BSA membership decision off a couple of more years until they've heard the good, bad, and ugly from them. In the meantime, I'd rather have honest partnerships that directs concerned families to Campfire USA, and elevates whatever recognition their program delivers. And, frankly, I'd rather NESA would shut up about Eagle already. We need more marketing of First Class scouts.

That was supposed to +1 NJ. Although, I would have put it more subtly: get a mirror.

Tell your SM to keep the BS out of the BSA.

To be clear, it's the US and Saudi are the only WSOM organizations who are unisex. Iran's movement has floundered since the revolution. Private parties are trying to restart it. It's not clear if it is co-ed. It seems to at least run parallel programs for girls and boys. (Gathered from pictures. I can only read about three words of Persian.)

My scouting career basically began with me going down to the basement and pulling my brothers' gear from the rafters. Then raiding mom's pantry for cans of food. No research involved. None of the stuff was anything I'd ordinarily buy. Same applied to my sister's stereo and abandoned records. So, this service might fill that gap (smaller families, fewer older siblings leaving stuff around the house). It's popular enough that they are still in business after a year. Still, if you can, give a kid some bills and a ride to a sporting goods store.

It must be a regional thing. I'm not surprised at all.

@@Stosh, we had a similar experience. Only it was a BOY scout from another troop untrained in the patrol method and patrol cooking. But, with our situation the options were integrate fully or go home. They opted for integration. When the only options are stay marginalized or partially integrate, it can only end badly.

For the non-allergic ... Peanut butter in the morning oatmeal.

Oh, sure. I really like our DAC. He personally attends to every Eagle project workbook. Guided my sons and many other boys in the troop very well. Is a go-to guy for Boy Scout rank advancement. Help me with disabled scouts and Medal of Honor candidates. Wears his tan field uniform quite well.How many venturing awards has he processed? He could count them on the fingers of his left knee! Maybe yours is better prepared. Ask when's the last he/she handled, taken a course on, or read all the requirements for the new venturing award. My advisors (advisors should always have good advisors) were found on the council venturing committee. Some things they'd give me a direct answer for. Other things it was, like "Have you asked your crew officers?" Or "Let your crew president give the VOA president a call." Who is your volunteer advancement administrator? Crew Committee Challenge makes clear that it's officers and advisors. My line to my crew about advisors: good for nothing and best used that way. So, you can read that line from the GTA quite literally, but the only people who should be contacting your DAC are your crew offices under your advice. In other words, maybe give them name of the DAC for them to call if they are at an impasse. But if is they conclude there is no impasse, there is no call to be made.

Although I agree with @@Stosh, that BSA opens the door for this kind of sentence-parsing every time they require bean-counting, I will insist that Venturing is not, nor ever was, designed for parsing syntax like you are trying to do! This is not your problem to solve. You can have whatever opinion you want. But, the ultimate decision falls on the youth, and frankly, your opinion might not mean a hill of beans to them. What you need to do, is prepare them to navigate choppy waters: Have your officers do this: Read the minutes your crew secretary published, and officers subsequently approved regarding motions for service projects. If a motion was approved for the crew to send youth representatives to Jambo to volunteer as staff, then it is a crew service project. If such a motion was made but subsequently overturned or no motion was ever made, then it is not a crew service project. If no minutes were published, fall back on your crew's calendar of events. If volunteering at Jambo was not on the calendar, it was not a crew service project. Frankly, if ScoutBook was worth the dime in electricity and internet service you all wasted to run it, it would automatically know to map the venturer's participation in designated crew activities to their service hour tally for each award. This would be logged, by the way, by the crew historian or secretary, not some member of committee. If your crew kept no calendar of events, then ask the BoR to choose its two adult non-voting members carefully so as to get reasonable opposing views on the matter. Hold the board for this venturer promptly so as to clear the air on the matter. Let this be a lesson to them that there is a downstream cost to not adopting rules of decorum in the management of meetings. STOP interpreting requirements, tracking advancement by adult leaders, and committee arguing about matters above their pay grade and yours. START making this about youth leadership (not leadership development, that's a method of boy scouting, not venturing). CONTINUE trusting your youth to do an excellent job by listening to the issues, conferring among themselves and touching base with their Council, Area, Regional, and National VOA if this is still a problem for them.

My crew doesn't have a problem with this because they don't care about advancement. However, I have had committee and parents take issue with my youth in a similar fashion, so ... My take? Ban Scoutbook. Through it information was leaked to a parent ... information which nobody besides the venturer and his/her advisor should be privy. The crew officers are responsible for discipline within the crew. That includes determining if a member is playing fast-and-loose with requirements. So says http://www.scouting.org/filestore/venturing/pdf/512-940_WB.pdf Discovery and Pathfinder Boards of Review Composition of the Discovery and Pathfinder Boards of Review Discovery and Pathfinder boards of review consist of the award candidate’s peers in the crew. The board is chaired by the crew president, unless the president is the subject of the board; then a crew vice president becomes the chair. There is no required number of Venturers for the board, but a group of three—the chair and two members—is considered most appropriate. Fewer than that does not fully reflect the importance of the award Venturing Board of Review Guide 3 milestones. The chair selects the other board members from the crew. Two adults registered with the crew, preferably members of the crew committee, must be present during the board of review in a nonvoting advisory capacity. The crew Advisor and associate Advisors are not members of the board of review, but may be present as observers, and they may serve as one or both of the registered adults present. At no time should there be more adults than Venturers present at a board of review. ... Now, I could give you my opinion on "to count or not to count?" But, that would be overstepping the authority vested in your officers under your guidance. I am not one of the two select members of your crew's D&P BoR; therefore, I am in no position to advise them. Tell your youth the book says it's on them to determine if the spirit of the requirements are met. Tell your disgruntled parent that a stranger on the internet told them to go pound sand. Edited so you could have the line I've used for times like this: "I'm not about to be bothered about the burrs up anyone's butt, including yours."

@@EmberMike, the guys who started the company posted on this forum and took some suggestions during their soft roll-out. My kids knew what they wanted by breaking in (sometimes, quite literally) my equipment. @@Stosh, I agree. The boys loved the personal touches ... be it the full roll of baler twine in my car, the SM's wife's cookies, my brother stopping by with two large pizzas, or one dad's raid of the road-side candy store at the foot of the mountain. That said, for a completely clueless family (e.g., one where the parents -- not just one family, but the entire patrol of them -- never camped), the collection shown on these boxes helps a boy gear-up in a scout-appealing way. E.g., the freeze-dried ice-cream sandwich: I tossed one in my pack during the crew's last backpacking trip, and it astounded the boys at the end of a rugged evening.

Guys, can we drop the "C" from the "SE"? There's only one CSE, and as important as this issue is, I'm pretty sure Mike would direct it to the SE of the respective council. He never struck me as the "I've done my time" sort of guy, so it's not that the task would be beneath him. But, I can't imagine him overstepping the SE's authority on this one.

@@NJCubScouter, you might be right. Because with A, there would no extra rechartering fee for a CO to add girls to any of its existing boys' program; B, there would be a new rechartering fee if every CO who wants girls in their boy scout program; C, there would be two new rechartering fees ever CO who wants girls in both their cub- and boy- scout programs; and D, the rechartering fees remain at existing levels (depending on how many CO's are content to field cub- and boy- scouts as currently constituted). My preference is obviously A, because it keeps national off of scouters' backs, allowing the boots-on-the-ground latitude in implementation, and norming to occur at round-tables and camporees. If not A, then stick with D until the nation's ready. But, what are the chances BSA is not in this for a fast buck?

@@eagle90, sounds like you have the right attitude. I think it would be helpful to go over the Outdoor Code with him. Ask him what he can do better to live up to that code at the next camp. Think of positive things. Like, identify natural fire starters or master matchless fires. Then, talk about what he can do to master points #6 and #8 of the scout law. Not merely curbing a mean spirit, but being the cheerleader of first-year scouts. Use your judgment. You are within your rights and responsibilities if you want to see him demonstrate this aspect of scout spirit on the next activity before you recommend him to his board of review. On the other hand, if you've seen him perform better since being reprimanded, you may want to positively reinforce that by confirming that his recent behavior proves to you that he's doing his best on his honor. Finally, if he doesn't have a position of responsibility already, have him consider which one he'd like to fill, but tell him to not bother asking the SPL to appoint him unless he's willing be a little more responsible than he was at camp. Every PoR requires scout-like behavior. In my book, the day the behavior goes sour, is the day the position terminates.

That all sounds fine and good, until you hear the history. Those rules were put in place after some female explorers/venturers were nominated to be tapped out, and lodge chiefs were okay with it.