Torchwood

We had our annual winter camping trip the first weekend in January. The neighboring Council has a camp on one side of Blue Hills in Milton, MA (just south of Boston). We take 2 Adirondack shelters for the night, and the camp has a nice outdoor program- skating rink, snowshoes, sleds, ax yard, outdoor cooking area, tomahawk, archery and bb ranges, etc. Availability of some programs became a little limited due to the weather. We got about 10-12" of snow- it started just before the boys started to make lunch. Temps got down to 6F overnight. The younger boys had some serious bragging rights for sc

In our Troop, we have a much higher percentage of our Scouts earn Eagle than the national average, but we are hardly an Eagle Mill. Generally, the boys that earn Eagle Scout are 17 or almost, and our last two Eagles were within a month of their 18th birthday. The last young Eagle we had was just shy of 16, and remained active until he graduated from high school- he continued to be active, serving as SPL and then as an Instructor, and racking up a total of 55 Merit Badges. My son turned 15 in December and has completed all of the requirements for Eagle except for his project, which he has alrea

You should see the shocked look on the faces of most of the parents in my Troop when I tell them that my son has to pay 30% towards any event he wants to attend. He also gets an allowance from me- his mother doesn't (we are divorced). The Troop is in a relatively affluent town southwest of Boston, a town that I can't even dream of affording a house in. A good number of the Scouts are from well off families, and don't seem to care about how much things cost or taking care of the Troop gear. I am actually toying with the idea of adding "Adulting 101" to the Troop program to prepare these boys fo

IOLS is only properly done if you are a patrol for the weekend, in my opinion. We had 4 Patrols when i did it several years ago. We had a PL, duty roster for cooking and cleaning for meals, etc. We did everything the way the boys are supposed to, so that we learned to see the program from the Scout's perspective. If you are "playing patrol", or just there for the lessons, you aren't getting the whole experience. My program ran from dinner on Friday through mid-afternoon on Sunday, and we could have still covered more. I was a Scout, and have been involved as a leader since my 15 year-old was a

When they decided to make CyberChip a required thing, they should have revamped the whole thing to make it a teachable program. The requirements as they exist right now are geared to having a Scout teach to a group of other Scouts. When the whole Troop eventually needs to get this training, that is no longer a viable mechanism, since the content isn't varied enough for multiple Scouts to pass on the knowledge without it becoming repetitive and boring. This is now similar to my Council's requirement to take YPT annually, yet National hasn't updated the training in years.

We have an annual registration fee of $50/ Scout that covers all of the re-chartering fees to Council/National/insurance. We have a single fundraiser- holiday greens. Each Scout has a minimum amount to sell, based on our margin, or if they do not participate, there is an alternative payment of $150. That covers awards and the basic operational costs of the Troop, including repair/replace costs on all of our gear (much of the Troop equipment was pretty old and in a sad state of repair when my son crossed over, and we have been pretty aggressive about rectifying that). We set a fee for each trip

We have had a couple of evenings, at the Scouts' request, to finish partials with a couple of specific counselors. Usually the Citizenship badges are the big culprits, but also going over the reporting requirements for Pers. Fitness, Pers. Management and Family Life to get those buttoned up too. They are small affairs- a handful of boys and a couple of counselors and parents.

Hmm, every explanation of the points of the Scout Law I have ever seen have mentioned the "pays his own way" thing. He is being thrifty with his family's resources by not expecting Mom & Dad to open their wallets every time he wants something. That would mean to me that every Scout needs to participate in fundraising for the Troop.

I have the DIgital Technology eBook, and my wife has the Animation one. They have some interesting additional content available that may make them worth the bother. What I don't like is the delivery system. a single purchase can only be on 2 devices.

As far as I know, there is no GSUSA publication at all. I guess it would cut into those cookie profits. My daughter does read Girl's Life, because she is a tween and does like looking at fashion stuff. But, she has no Barbie dolls- she does have Monster High dolls though. She is also bored to tears with a lot of the GSUSA activities, although her present Troop leader has asked me for help teaching more outdoor skills to the girls, so there is hope. They are going on their fall Encampment this weekend. The first year she did this, she was the only girl in her Troop who had hiking boots and all

Yeah, I think we will stick with Troopmaster. When a Scout is approaching Eagle, our Troop Advancement Chair checks our Troopmaster report against ScoutNet to make sure that no balls were dropped. Only the Troop Key3 have access to Troopmaster, and only the Adv Chair has full access. I and the CC only have read-only access so that we can't accidentally change something, and on close the database file is backed up locally with a dated file, so we can always look back if there is ever an issue. Based on my experiences with anything related to BSA IT, it makes no sense to have a single point of f

We moved to SOAR in June- still waiting for the old webmaster to give me access to our domain, but we have the old site auto-redirecting for now. Took me no time to get it setup and running. We have moved most of the content over from the old site, including a decade of photos. We are about to launch online registration for trips instead of emailing PDF permission slips, and this fall we will setup the online payment for trips and dues. The whole committee is very impressed with what we are able to do for $100 a year.

In out Troop, we cover all registration fees. The summer camp we go to has a sliding scale of covered adults, based on the number of Scouts. We try to have 4 in camp at all times, so that if we have to make a trip to the urgent care place (which has happened), we still have 2 adults. Any extra adults over what the camp covers are paid by the Troop. The only thing we need to pay for in that case is meals, which is $100 per person for the week. All other trips are pay as you go. We do cover parking fees incurred for people driving Scouts on our trips, and also cover gas for the person towing the

Yes, not really my job. But, the dust-up included us losing a brand new CC as well as the promised new SM backing out. Both had good reasons, but left a big hole. I was never planning to be SM. I was happy as ASM, and it worked far better with my work schedule and other commitments. That being said, the boys in the Troop deserve to have proper leaders, so here I am. A succession plan is also in the works for my position.

We had a leadership dust-up at the end of the school year, so our annual planning schedule was disrupted. I have taken over as SM, and I will be sitting down over ice cream with our present PLC to solidify their plan for the year, followed by a TC meeting before Labor Day to get the adult needs for those events in place. My next agenda items are to sit down with the School Super and get him on board with allowing us to recruit in the middle and high schools, and to help rebuild our Troop Committee- the right people in the right roles, and each with a shadow person learning that role so the

We distributed a shirt to every Scout, Adult Leader, and to the parents who volunteer on outings. We have a pretty good inventory, since it makes more sense to not have to incur the screen charges too often, I have several, and they were basically my entire wardrobe at summer camp, except for evening colors, when the standard uniform is worn.

All of our planning is done before the school year ends- the PLC does the initial planning, then the Troop Committee massages things over the summer, as school calendars are solidified (we have had band events and other required things crush attendance at planned Troop events in the past, so we need to stay on top of multiple calendars, some not easy to find).

I am currently using the Adidias Climacool boxer briefs. Liked them so much for hiking and camping, that I have switched to them for daily wear. Available at your local Costco warehouse.

Yes, but the kindle is basically self-contained. It doesn't have the other features of a smartphone or tablet which entice us to check email, Facebook, etc.- just for a second. Our Troop has a no electronics policy on outings, but I think that a Kindle or other e-reader without wifi/cell access would be an acceptable exception to that policy.

One other handy tip- if you have a Kindle, you can send PDFs to it and be able to read them offline. The basic unit (mine is a couple of years old) will hold a charge for a good long time, and is a great place to store reference materials like G2SS, etc. We make our own version of the guide that our summer camp distributes, since theirs is full of outdated info and errors (grammar and otherwise). Much easier to keep a copy of that handy on my kindle than to print it out.

+ Infinity on this!!!

We did brand new wicking shirts in the fall. Custom Troop logo on front (chest) and back (3 color screens on each side). From a local guy. Cost came to $12 per shirt. I always thought that ClassB was pricey, and the heavyweight Ts are not only too heavy for summer wear, but they tend to shrink in odd ways too. We also did a one color version of the logo on matching neckers for $7 per. They look awesome, and since the Scouts worked with my wife (she is a technical illustrator and graphic designer) to design the logo, they actually don't balk at wearing the neckers, and a couple of the boys even

My son, who is a 14 year old Life Scout, enjoys his own company. He would rather be reading, or drawing, or working on some other solo project most of the time. Scouts has been a great experience for him in terms of learning to deal with other people, and has helped him be more social. He is currently a Patrol Leader and has his sights set on Senior Patrol Leader this September. He is a straight A student and his Scouting career has progressed quickly due to his hard work, not any plan that I might have had for him. I am an Assistant Scoutmaster, but I give him a wide berth at any and all Scou

Why were your Scouts fundraising for another organization to begin with? Collecting food for a local shelter or food pantry, cool. doing a service project for a local organization- helping plant trees, building a handicapped access ramp, cleaning up alongside a road, clearing trails, etc. are all good works. Fundraising for another organization, with a clearly political agenda is a HUGE red flag.

FWIW, they are NOT Oriental. They are Asian. And your examples are Americans, just of differing ancestry than you. I will edit my original comment to just the UK.