WisconsinMomma

I think since we have two troops in the same community, it makes great sense to merge rather than have two distinct troops. I wonder if we should plan in advance for next school year to be the last year of our Troop and then dissolve/merge with the neighbor troop. This would give all the current Life Scouts another year to finish Eagle with this troop should they want it. The issue though is the trailer and all the money. I am sure we can find people to take them, it's just -- what is the right way to to do this? The chartered org technically would get it all. Can troops disbu

Backround: Our troop is down to one patrol, figure 10 scouts in the troop. We have key leadership positions filled. Three scouts will age out this year. The next year, three more scouts will age out. Then two Then two are left. We are not anticipating any new scouts joining from Cubs for the next two years. There is a large Wolf den in Cubs. My husband is the Scoutmaster. He says he will remain Scoutmaster for the next three yeas until our youngest scout gets Eagle in this troop. Frankly, I don't know if my youngest son wants to eagle in this troop, or

How did it go?

Does your pack offer a fundraising buyout?

My oldest is a Life Scout and turns 18 in one year. He has 5, whoops, now 6 MB's left to finish. I do not think he will finish everything before July 1. Maybe, but it depends on his hustle. Cit in Society will not have a MB book and it sounds more like a reflection and conversation with a counselor. Might not be all that time-consuming, thank goodness!

This should be a lesson to all troops for what to watch out for. All bullying is unacceptable in Scouting. It can be too easy to see scouts with differences as "a problem" and to pressure scouts and parents to leave. Physical abuse needs to be stopped immediately. Our Youth Protection Training teaches this, but leaders have to be vigilant and have to stand up for ALL YOUTH.

For dens, meet in homes. Does anyone have enough space to host the pack on their property? Call your park director and/or mayor and ask for free use of the pavillion for your non profit once a month.

I am loving the open-ended, campsite gadget idea !

Oh the kids, er, Scouts, have made what we call "tripod with a lever". They LOVED it.

My mistake, they were playing a game of catch.

OK, I am a new assistant scoutmaster, and we have two other new assistant scoutmasters. In addtion, the kids in our troop trend younger. We do not have a strong command of scout skills. However, the bright side is that the kids are having fun at the meetings. At our last one, scouts made an activity to play dodgeball and when you're out, you have to answer a question about hiking / outdoor safety to get back in. This was a good idea and they had lots of fun but they did not have a ton of questions prepared. But it was a good effort. At our recent Zombie outing, the kids fi

I will brag about how awesome our local fire department is. They are very community oriented. Our fire chief is extremely into community partnerships and outreach to the schools and other community groups. They are also working to promote work as firefighters and paramedics, dispatchers, etc. They need good people in the future generations. I think that the only difficulty is that every troop in the metro area would want them as CO. But talk about positive adult association. It's possible that our PD's would also do this for outreach and community building. Our fire chief is in

This totally sounds like they want to reduce liability in case of future abuse lawsuits.

One of the things I enjoyed at scout camp this year was seeing the trailers and flags of units from all over, as well as seeing who some of the sponsors were. Fire departments sponsor units. VFW's sponsor units. There are a lot of places that will help with this, and a lot of people who see the value in Scouting. Our units are sponsored by parent-teacher school organizations. If we had to look for more sponsors, I would likely approach our local Friends of the Library and Friends of the Nature Center non-profit groups,

I am late to this and have not read all the replies but instead of giving out titles, delegate tasks -- hey, would you have time to do our Scout Shop shopping for all the awards? Let them do it once. Then ask for repeat help. Then slip them an advancement guide... little baby steps. Hey, would you come along with grocery shopping for our campout? Would you help plan our October outing? I'd start off with one-off, low commitment jobs. Then see how they do with those, then give PROFUSE THANKS and invite again. Do not forget the Profuse Thanks stage. People need to feel

Really great suggestions, thank you!

I was talking to another adult leader at camp who asked me, "is this your only camp this summer?" And I was like, "what? you go to more than one camp?" And they said, "yes, earlier this summer some of our scouts went to Tesomas and now we are here." He mentioned that they sometimes struggle to get enough adults for the camp that's farther away. This sort of blew my mind. Two summer camps? I discussed this with my husband, but he quickly said that he does not have enough time to do two summer camps. I also wonder, if anyone here knows, how hard is it to get into Tesomas

This is something that I heard for the first time while at camp, the Scout Vesper second verse... Listen Lord, oh listen Lord,As I whisper soft and low,Bless my Mom and bless my Dad,There is something they should know.I have kept my honor bright.The Oath and Law has been my guide.Mom and Dad, this you should know,Deep in my heart I love you so. The thing that struck me is the "mom and dad" mentions. When I was recently having a discussion about culturally responsive teaching with our school superintendent, she mentioned an example from a kindergarten class with a young teacher who w

You know, I would not might living on a site of a camp. I would prefer to live adjacent to a working camp though. Dreams are free...

That might be optimistic. As long as our camps have enough space and time to give the kids a good outdoor experience and capacity does not get too over-full, that is good. I have not spent as much time at camps as my family. Our troop used to go to LeFeber (closed), then Gartner Dam (shifted focus more to cub programs), then Ma Ka Ja Wan (hit by derecho) and this year Long Lake. We are staying closer to home. Thunderstorms are scary for some of the kiddos who went through that severe weather in 2019.

I'm in Three Harbors, so our camps are Indian Mound Scout Reservation in Oconomowoc and Oh Da Ko Ta in Burlington. Both are nice camps. Both have a lot of people attached to the camps so it is tough. We are visiting Potawatomi Council's Long Lake for summer camp this year and looking forward to it. The most valuable part of Scouting is the people. There are some tremendous Scouters in the council and I hope that they are not too discouraged. I also hope that, hey could we find some big donor somewhere? I don't know. Seems like we would have already had one if that's the case.

I agree that the YPT training is very good. Very, very good and I'd even say it may be the gold standard for youth protection at this point in time in the United States. If you have not seen it, take a look. Note it may be triggering, it makes me feel very emotional and it is memorable and important information.

Our council has two camps and sent a survey asking members about them. It sounds likely that one or maybe both would be sold. Our up north camp was sold a while back. It is hard to say one camp is better than the other, as we have good memories at both. One camp has much better facilities and cabins, the other is more wild. I think either could be made into a subdivision or whatever if sold. The up north camp has had nothing happen with it as far as I know.

Update; my husband (current SM) and CC connected and my husband is going to let this go. He offered to talk with the former SM but they have not reached out to him to discuss. CC will have my husband's back and we do not have any parent committee meetings until Fall so perhaps this will just fade away. CC is committed to making sure that during troop committee meetings that people will speak up if they have things to say and will help with the communication pieces. Onward to a troop fundraiser today, and bringing one of our kiddos home from NYLT this afternoon.