Hedgehog

The Guide to Safe Scouting Provides: • Tenting When camping, no one is permitted to sleep with a person of the opposite sex or an adult other than his or her own spouse, parent, or guardian. Assigning youth members more than two years apart in age to sleep in the same tent should be avoided unless the youth are relatives. But the Venturing FAQs (http://www.scouting.org/filestore/venturing/pdf/VenturingFAQs.pdf) provide: Q: For sleeping and bathroom arrangements, would units now have 6 classification zones? (Under 18 male, under 18 female, 18-20 male, 18-20 female, over 21 male, and ov

We charge $100 a year. That includes $24 registration, $1 insurance, registration and insurance costs for the adults, registration costs for the Troop, advancement awards (rank and MBs) and PoR patches. Popcorn fundraising typically goes to purchasing equipment (the Troop equipment was in poor shape when the current SM took over). A typical trip is $16 for food and consumables ($3 breakfast, $3 lunch, $5 dinner $3 breakfast and $1 consumables) and $4 camping costs (around $50 a night, for two nights and 25 scouts). Backpacking treks don't cost anything because the boys bring their own f

Wait, that was you snoring? My head still hurts from being startled and trying to sit up in the middle of the night.

Our Council dissolved back in 2015 and our district merged into a nearby Council. The chapters merged also. Although I wasn't in OA at the time, the comment I heard was that the youth Arrowman leadership were better at navigating the merger than the adults leading the districts and council.

Our Troop will be having something siimilar for Emergency Preparedness. A lot of the boys got partials at summer camp.

Somehow, I keep thinking that this is something the BSA got right. Between 11 and 14, boys tend to be less emotionally mature and are typically uncomfortable around girls. Boy Scouts gives the boys something of their own at that age. The advancement through First Class provides them with something to accomplish. For girls of that age, they tend to be a little less adventurous. Actually, who am I kidding, the boys are less adventurous but only do it to keep up with the older boys. I think the girls need to get to the point where they are tired of Girl Scouts and want the adventure. By age

Anything above Class II requires a guide or specialized training under Safety Afloat guidelines: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/OutdoorProgram/Aquatics/safety-afloat.aspx. Ratings of rapids see here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Scale_of_River_Difficulty Depending on the river, a lot of rain will increase the speed of the current. That typically isn't a problem. However, the rain will also raise the water level which will make rocks that were just above the surface and visible now just below the surface and invisible. In those conditions, the scouts should try to ke

Here is a Boy's Life article with Trip Plans and Emergency Response Plan: http://boyslife.org/outdoors/outdoorarticles/14567/forms-for-planning-a-backpacking-trip/ I used these for the Backpacking Merit Badge. Additionally, BSA provides this for Venturing Crews: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/venturing/pdf/510-022_Fillable.pdf Yes, but have the boys sit down and develop the form. Don't make it an adult implemented paperwork requirement.

@@Stosh, much of the Scout through First Class requirements are included in the Ranger award as are the core requirements for the outdoor merit badges. Just looking at the requirements, I'd put a Venturer with the Ranger Award up against any First Class Scout any day.

As someone starting a Venturing Crew that will be mostly girls, I agree. From age 11 through 13, boys need their own program. At age 14, the boys have the maturity to work in a co-ed environment. Also, any Boy Scout advancement for Crew members in our Crew will continue be done through the Troop. I see Boy Scout advancement as a distraction to the Venturing program. The Venturing program is designed with an emphasis on Adventure, Leadership, Personal Growth and Service. Those four components are what the Venturers design their program around. The Venturing rank advancement focuses on

I'm in the process of working with a group of youth starting up a co-ed Venturing Crew. Most of the young woman are in the exact same place as the young woman you reference. Based on word of mouth we are up to 7 young woman and four young men that are interested. You've gotten two good answers so far. The Venturer's Handbook is one of the best BSA publications out there. It appears to have been written by one person who actually understood what they were writing about. As mentioned above, there is rank advancement. You can download the requirements from the link @@qwazse provided

We do the same for summer camp. Fortunately, the camp we go to has a limit on the number of adults. I think they allow us to have 4 adults for 25 scouts and to pay for up to one additional adult.

Our Troop only does popcorn sales. Last year it was badly managed because the Popcorn Chair didn't return the show and sell popcorn and we ended up with a significant inventory that we are still trying to sell. We typically make around $1,000 from popcorn. We charge $100 per Scout for annual registration with $25 going to Council and $75 to the Troop to cover merit badges, awards, rank patches, POR patches and the cost of food at three Courts of Honor and a holiday party. We have been running outings at pretty much break even by charging for food ($3 for breakfast, $3 for lunch,

The title is pretty much self explanatory. What does it cost for aduts in your unit? For our Troop, the Troop covers the $25 BSA /Council annual registration fee. That doesn't add a lot to the kids cost because the troop is around 50 boys, but even so, with 10 adults at $25 that is $250 or $5 per boy. Adults pay the same as Scouts to go on outings -- that is they pay the same for food ($3 breakfast, $3 lunch, $5 dinner and $1 for consumables like propane), the same for camping (typically $2 to $4 per person determined by the total cost for the campsite by our typical attendance of 25 pe

Simply put, follow your heart and do what is best for the boys.

Agreed. My other concern is the long term viability of the crew. The backcountry-experienced mom has a daughter in 10th grade. In three years, the daughter will be off to college and we may lose the mom. Finding a backountry experienced mom of a younger Venturer this year or next would be great. But so far, off to a good start.

The presumption has to be that every activity or campout should be something new and that you only repeat if it the prior activity was awesome and there are a lot of boys who agree to do it again. In three years, we've done two repeats.

@@Stosh - I"m trying to prove you wrong this year. In the past three years, our Troop transitioned from adult ideas, adult decisions, adult planning and adult implementation to youth ideas, youth decisions, adult planning and youth implementation. The next step this year is to designate one member of the PLC as being responsible for planning the outing with an adult mentoring them. What is funny is that we decided on this before I learned that is the way Venturing works. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes. As I've posted before, when my son had joined Boy Scouts I had never

I hope he is in a good troop. As @@qwazse said, your son would fit right in as part of our Troop. I think I mentioned it before, a similar shy kid joined our Troop this year and I asked him if it was because there was a lot of goofballs like him... he smiled and said "yup." The guys going into high school seem to have adopted him as a little brother. He had the biggest smile last month when camp was over and I told his parents that during the week he "really became part of the Troop." The older boys and SM can find ways to help him. I would have him go with some other scouts to a Cub Sco

I think there will be flames. At least 7 of the youth are already in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts so they have an interest in scouting. Most of the young women who are interested are REALLY interested in the focus on adventure and the guys are "hardcore" Boy Scouts who go on every adventure they can. Also, the way this developed is that the core group are all friends. I was laughing because four of them got together to watch the fifth perform in a play a couple of weeks back. We have one female leader who is very experienced in backpacking and one who is comfortable hiking, boa

Update: We are up to 7 young woman and 5 young men that are interested. We have two current scoutmasters, two assistant scoutmasters, and two committee members from two area troops volunteering along with two or three other adults for a total of 4 woman and 4 men. I'm meeting the CoR for coffee tomorrow to go over details and he has an appointment with the IH next week to sign the paperwork. Have the first meeting scheduled for late August. Should have a new Crew by September.

Now I know what to get my son for Christmas. Yeah, but that means I don't need a shelter, food or a stove. But seriously, I don't carry it on longer treks - if it is 3 days and 6 to 8 miles a day the extra pound isn't a big deal. If it if five days and 12 plus miles a day, the. I just have my Gerber Paraframe.

Begin rant: Why try to compete with school and other programs that are much better staffed? There are STEM programs galore where I am. You could do robotics camp taught by a college professor, our High School robotics team is coached by someone with 30 years engineering experience; we have multiple summer camps that teach programing, web design, etc. So now the program isn't working and we think it is bacause it lacks a focus on the Arts? This is a case of being everything to everyone and ending up being nothing special for nobody. BSA needs to focus on what makes it different an

I know this probably won't fly knowing your circumstances, but... Why not ask the boys to come up with a solution? There are a number of issues in our Troop that need fixing. Rather than have the adults come up with a solution, I'm putting it to the boys at their leadership campout. When we've done this in the past, their solutions are usually better than ours. The requireiment is to tell a friend about scouting and invite them to a meeting. The requirement doesn't say they have to come to the meeting. One idea is for him to help out with any activities done with Cub

Didn't an adult sign off on the skill that the adults now think the scouts don't know well enough? Ooops.