TheGong

I am not saying that you have to wear the class A all the time but if the president does so should the rest of the crew. Even though uniforming is not a method of venturing you should still have pride in it. But it's all up to the crew that's why I said if they decide to wear the Class A they should wear it.

If your crew decides to wear the recomended uniform, than they all should wear it to meetings. The "class B" uniform or activity uniform as it's called in venturing is more for activities.

The best way to make ceremonies better is to have a youth work on them, maybe even rewrighting the script and leading the building of new regalia. If the youth can also sit in on district committee meetings and roundtables to help establish the OA presence then they might do more with the district. I do like the idea of a new program that works with webelos, or new scouts, or teaches advanced scout skills but why can't the old program do that as well?

"They seem rather dated and of little interest to Scouts, even Cub Scouts when I have seen our district OA chapter providing a ceremony." Perhaps they are not interested because the OA members doing the cermony are just learning how to perform. My chapter does around 35-40 crossover cermonies in late January-February, almost 4 a week. We travel all across the state for our ceremonies, because we are very good at ceremonies. The thrill that I see in Cub Scouts when we do a crossover is something I will never forget. Every guy whos been on our ceremony team almost instantly loves it even if

emb021 is right the OA does a lot for some councils/districts. I will admit though sometimes the OA gets a little to caught up in tradition and wont always accept new things, but a new program would be dificult to create. There is no way of preventing them from creating a new program but the only person who can disolve the OA is the Supreme Chief of the Fire. I think that a new program would look very similar to the OA structure just without all the ceremonies and indian stuff. You would have to outline its purpose, is it service oriented or scout skills, or some other method?

The HA oppertunities at the SBR are very important in driving the beginings of HA. If a younger scout can experience white water rafting, climbing, zip lining, and hiking in one weekend it will lead him to determine what kind of HA he wants to do in the future, maybe he found out he likes to hike so he wants to go to philmont, maybe scuba is his new hobby so he wants to go to sea base. I do agree that the price is an issue for most people but that is what fundraising is for. Every scout no matter what social-economic level they are in should try to pay his way to camp it teaches the value o

The best thing you can do is sell the boy led troop and patrol method to the kids. They are the ones who want to lead and all they need is a chance to do so. If the boys buy into and you build a successful program the parents will buy into it and your troop will grow. Every troop has a boom and bust period it just happens some of us are more often in the bust period, but if we continually develop good youth leaders the program will thrive. Advancement will follow a good program. Getting the scouts to eagle is important but not at the cost of having fun and learning leadership, outdoor skills,

It is our uniforms that show our outward pride in being scouts, just as doing a good turn daily, and being prepared. We have class B shirts and we require class A's at least once a month at our meetings. When a scout first joins his troop we recomend that he only get a class A shirt and not the pants and socks and belt because all of that together is over $100 and they just had to pay a registration fee, and dues, and now we have summer camp and thats how the expenses add up. As the boy gets older (and stops growing so much) we recomend that he gets the pants and as much as the full uniform as

I completely agree that we need the old timers with a lot of experince, but most of them are not direct contact leaders but they do the trainings for the direct contact leaders which is very needed. My crew advisor is one of the "knot" leaders and a direct contact leader which is rare from what I've seen. He is more than qualified as an adult leader and we love him dearly as our adult advisor, but Venturing is a youth led unit just as most troops should be as well. With a youth led unit the adult responsibility goes down in the day to day stuff. I am all for recognizing our leaders but I

Up here in the Area 2 project all of our council shops will be or have already been changed into national shops, so I suspect that this will happen accros the country. Local shops dont make enough or carry enough supplies to fullfill the needs of the public. Plus unless its a council run or national run shop they cant sell advancement.

1 old tan from when I was a scout (storage) 1 old tan eagle (storage) 1 old tan ASM 1 new tan council/ OA 1 green 1 new tan (work) 1 set of dress whites

Adam S, I work in a national scout shop and we do not require paper work for any knot unless it is really restricted, but then again we know almost everyone who walks into our shop. We dont carry most restricted knots, those you have to order from national and require paperwork. My problem with giving out a thousand knots is that soon a scouter has a fleet of knots on his uniform, and then wood badge beads, and then a powder horn dangle. At that point I begin to question how involved they are with the youth and that is the point of the program. A kid doesnt care about all the patches and aw

I think distiguishing between cub and boy scout is good but everyone I know who wears silver always wears silver no matter the uniform or event, and gold is just as bad. I could see haveing a different color for DEs and employees but even that is hearsay

Moose you are completely right about DEs. We need more boots on the ground is the common phrase up here. That is why most of our districts will have multiple DEs. My own district is getting a second one and we cover 5 counties! The district just north of me has like 9 counties.

Our council has already put all events online and many of them you can not actually pay in person, they will tell you to go online. Actually they did state before the merger that no summer camp will close in the first 3 years so we know for the next year or two that all will stay open. This deals with the fact that we no longer have out of council fees for camps that might be in our "leagacy" council. >>>Do you think that families will choose to pay for internet over rent or food? What about all of those families that do not have computers (yes they are out there)? Do you think

actually tabs is an accepted term, epaulets is not. National does classify them as loops but they can be called tabs. Epaulets describe the cloth portion of the uniform that the loops, or tabs, go on.

Do not wear silver loops anywhere but on official camp buissness, it is just bad taste. We are in scouting to make a difference to youth, NOT TO SHOW OFF to them!!!

They are not closing any camps!!! The area 2 camping committee is looking at the usage of camps this summer and will determine future actions based on these results. Our camps in michigan overall lost $500,000, and most camps were at less then half capacity overall. Camps will be reasigned as cub camps or venture bases not closed!!! The area 2 merger also has almost no effect on most if not all volunteers except a simple patch change. DE's only make about 30-40k a year for working 60+ hours a week, they are very cheep and undervalued. Our SE are the people who make real money and there actuall

Wearing special tabs for jambo is one thing but to then single out OA members is a little over the top. We already have our lodge flaps and universal arrow ribbon to wear on our uniforms all the time. We also have a sash for OA events and promoting the OA. Jambos are special and few people overall go to them making special tabs easy to hand out but with the number of OA members we have there is no way we can make tabs for ourselves. That being said one of our lodges up here in Michigan have special OA tabs and it drives me mad seeing it on their uniforms.

We have a joke in our lodge that we must contribute to our embelzelment fund. (Our lodge is joing with 3 other lodges)

I currently work for a national scout shop and we also pay rent to a council, but that is only the case in which the shop and council office are in the same building. Now for the patch price, most are made for mere pennies including the world crest which is made for one cent but sells for $1.51

I work in a national scout shop and there is no validation required to buy a knot. That being said I do not believe in adult advacement which is what these knots are, I do happen to wear 2 knots, the arrow of light and Eagle scout (both earned as a youth). I have no problem with people wearing knots that they earned as youth because it shows they were in the program. Also cub scouters have way to many knots anyway and I completely agree with the scouters key and training award program.