bsaggcmom

@@SSF Not all girls want to have tea parties and play with dolls. Some want to be outside to camp, cook and get muddy. There's nothing wrong with that. I wanted to be an astronaut as a young girl, I grew up watching moon landing and then the space shuttle missions. Watched the first moon landing live as a very small girl, watched Columbia blow up live as a freshman college student. My favorite outfit as a 7-9 year old was my NASA flight suit I got as a gift while visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I had Barbies, a sewing machine of my own and dresses too. Used all of them. But

We lived the same hassle with GS until we found a multi age troop 30 miles from our house when my daughter entered 6th grade (Cadettes). Things were so bad around our area we went to Canada and joined Girl Guides for 10 years. We are blessed to be in border city and the Canadian units were a mere 10 miles away (plus border crossing time). My daughter liked the GGC program so much that we would go there even after she joined the GSUSA troop that she just aged out of. In a lot of ways she had the best of 2 programs. Down side was double the cookies to sell, Canada sets the number you have to se

Sadly many youth don't see a doctor on a regular basis. I've been an allied health care provider for 25 years, not a doctor. I work with young adults on a daily basis. I find it scary, sad, and in some ways disgraceful that some of my college freshmen have no regular doctor or dentist and have never had a proper physical or dental exam. I had one incoming college freshman this school year that had NEVER been to a dentist, 18 years old and no dental visits ever!! Others have only ever seen the walk in clinic for pre sports physicals for $25 and the emergency room for illnesses and injuries.

In my council most of the camps are 2-5 hours away from the main population centers. Local metroparks, state parks and private campgrounds that are scout friendly are closer. Would love to use the council camps more but who wants to arrive at camp at midnight or later on Friday night and have to leave by 9 on Sunday morning to make it home at a decent time. They're nice properties for the most part just too far away for a weekend camp.

In my council parent & son activities are district/council run. No siblings, no tag a longs, only one adult per child. Limits are due to space and to allow the greatest number of scouts to participate. Family camp can be unit/district/council run. Usually unit run. The entire family can come, mom, the sisters, big/little brothers, etc. Once even had a set of grandparents come out. Depending on location activities at both can be very similar - shooting sports, fishing, hiking, games.

As GSMOM73 said, GSUSA doesn't have CO's like BSA. Leaders sign the agreement with the GS council and the troop is off and running. If the Catholic Church doesn't want to endorse GSUSA anymore the GS troops there just have a harder time recruiting and have lost a meeting space. GS troops aren't dependent on CO's to give them meeting space they have to find their own place to meet. My GS troop meets at a church, we pay a weekly rental fees that the girls fund through yearly dues to the unit. Some units meet in leaders homes, public meeting rooms in local libraries or if they are lucky they are

Jeanvaljean welcome. I'm going to guess that you are in Michigan somewhere due your comment about going to Cranbrook. If you are part of the GLFSC section of Michigan Crossroads Council then your Scoutmaster should have a merit badge counselor list for your district. Lists were sent by the district advancement chairs to the unit leaders (Scoutmasters, Coach for Varsity Scouts, Crew Advisors and Sea Scout Skippers) at the beginning of this school year. Data was encrypted to ensure that only the unit leaders with the correct code could access the list, some crap about MBC privacy was given

As others have said your son has plenty of time. Let's do a little number crunching to put things in perspective. Based on your son being 11 years old now he has about 7 years to complete his Eagle journey. He needs (currently) 21 merit badges, that's only 3 a year for the minimum. There are 7 ranks from start to end: Scout; Tenderfoot; Second Class; First Class; Star; Life; Eagle. Again that'd be 1 rank a year. But he can work on items in Scout, TF, SC, and FC all at the same time, so very possible to get more than 1 rank a year some years, it just happens. Some of the required badges have ti

Spring break is just finishing up in my neck of the woods. My GS troop spent it backpacking a section of the AT trail in North Carolina/Tennessee. The BSA troop did nothing. Couldn't even get a few boys out to help on a couple of Eagle Projects during the week. Girls trekked through rain, sleet, snow, then high temps and lots of mud. Boys didn't do much that I know of. A couple went on family vacations, rest were on their rumps. So I'd say my girls had more fun and bragging rights too. BTW - 2 out of 3 of the adults on the AT were Dads hiking with their daughters. For one Dad this was his

@@RememberSchiff As a very frequent border crosser and having family members that cross daily here are a few tips/guidelines for your trip. 1. Make sure you have notarized travel documents for each Scout you are bringing with you across the border. These include a permission to travel abroad with a list of specific adults on specific dates. Permission to obtain emergency medical care for each member (youth and adult) while in Canada if needed. Create a travel packet for each member. A gallon Ziploc bag that contains notarized forms, passport/border cards/enhanced state ID/origi

Yup I've heard of Eagling out. Trying to keep son from doing it. Darling son will be 17 in a couple of months, he got his Eagle just before his 15th birthday as a high school freshman. He is the troop's only Eagle. He has stuck around his troop and earned 6 palms with enough badges for 1 more. It has been a struggle to keep him and 2 other HS juniors and 2 HS seniors engaged in the program we have or should I say don't have at this time. The seniors and 1 of the juniors are Eagle bound, 2 should make it one probably not. When son joined his current troop as an incoming freshman it wa

EBoRs aren't about telling a bunch of old guys what they want to hear. Its about answering their questions honestly and articulately. Being able to stand up for your point of view and respecting theirs. If you can't say for certain that you'd get back involved when you have kids of your own or when you are done with college and have a stable life then you should be able to back up your point of view with reasons. I'd rather hear that a young man wants to include his wife in the choice, or that he was forced into scouts by his parents and really didn't enjoy it. I'd accept that career and famil

When son had his EBoR he was asked how he'd give back to Scouts - stay in troop till aging out and if he had a son would he come back at that time to help out. Reviewers went out of their way to tell him they weren't expecting him to balance college and scouting, but thought involvement in later life would be good. They also asked him lots of questions about the PoRs he held and how they demonstrated leadership in the troop. Nothing about uniform wear in public.

As a CPR/AED instructor for over 2 decades, the sad reality is that an AED alone without rapid EMS response and high quality immediate medical follow up is pretty much useless. People that suffer from cardiac arrest may be revived with an AED but they don't tend to survive without proper medical care. There are a very tiny percentage folks that have arrhythmias that an AED can convert and they will be OK, but those folks are few and far between and usually as Richard B says awaiting an implant. Most people that suffer from cardiac arrest have underlying heart and vascular disease that mus

I am a BSA leader and a GSUSA leader. I've been in BSA units that average 70 scouts per year with 45-50 active and ones that average 10 scouts, 5-8 active. My GSUSA unit has averaged 36 girls each year. Our biggest year we were 55, smallest 28 girls. We are a Cadette/Senior/Ambassador troop. We have NEVER turned a girl away. We have limited some activities to first come, first served due to rides/event space/ticket availability. We tell our parents Moms and Dads that they are expected to help out. If they don't help we don't go anywhere and won't do much. We are a week to week core leadership

My troop is kicking around the idea of going to Camp Ransburg in Indiana next summer. The youth in charge of the research like the class offerings and dining hall idea but haven't really researched other topics. We have no troops near us to ask about this camp so I'm coming to you all. In one of the Micosay threads Ransburg was mentioned as having Firecrafters program. A spin off of Micosay, I believe. My question, does Ransburg push the program and favor Firecrafters members like Bartle does Micosay? The scouts going to this camp will all be younger boys, 5-10 new crossovers and 3-6 seco

Growing up in Canada there were very few scout/guide camps and they didn't offer programs like the BSA or GSUSA run for their scouts here. If we used a scout owned camp the unit provided the adults and the program. It was awesome. We canoed, cooked, hiked and generally had a blast as kids. We went to national parks, provincial parks and conservation areas. Some were better equipped than the scout camps (showers and flush toilets). Me feeling is that scout camps have a place, but that they should be on a provisional basis across the board. If parents wish to send their scout to summer camp

If the amount of discuss, describe, and explain elements were decreased in MBs then 2 things would have to happen. Scouts would actually have to do a series of skills and MBCs would actually have to test the scout on those skills. End result would be no more/greatly reduced merit badge fairs, and greatly decreased summer camp class sizes. This would slow the rush to Eagle and is not what the BSA wants. One can lecture and hold discussions with dozens of scouts at once. Hard to supervise dozens of cooks at once.

A couple of the camps in our statewide mega council are hosting events like this. Scouts pay for a weekend of camp and complete just about any partial they earned at a summer camp or elsewhere. The waterfront and ranges will be staffed by the area directors from the camps with staff from all the council staffs that wish to volunteer. About $25 for the weekend of provo camping with food included.

In our council they tell the young ladies to be prepared for a 2-4 month wait after turning the initial proposal into the council office before being assigned an advisor. And that's after a guaranteed 3-4 rewrites of the proposal, the words of the council professional that handles the proposals. Then the advisor can pull the plug on the project if the candidate is not progressing at a pace the advisor sees fit. Also, there is no guarantee that the candidate will be picked up by an advisor. If no advisors want to deal with a candidate in your area/town then the proposal sits and waits at the of

Nice $75 per registered member donation to the council. I can see why they are dropping the Family FOS in that district. A great way to drop the volunteer base and multi scout families numbers. All I can say is glad my son only has 1.5 years left, it shouldn't make it out of pilot phase in that time frame.

Thanks for the offer Hedgehog, but we live in the Great Lakes state. New MBC lists are due out this fall. Maybe he'll get lucky and find the counselors he needs.

The cub camp my kids worked at all summer had several seniors or almost seniors working at it. The health officer was a retired nurse, still licensed in the state. Handicraft/scoutcraft was headed by a senior, was a waterfront director in his younger days. Kitchen had 3 oldsters on staff. Some stayed in their RVs, others were in adult staff housing. All were part of the staff and interacted with the younger staff, some good friendships were formed I think. The oldsters gave the youngsters a stability they needed and the youngsters gave the oldsters a reason to get up in the morning. I spen

My son needs wilderness survival, nature, soil and water, for his NOA medal. We don't have any non camp counselors for any of them in our district. He just figured out that he could complete the NOA medal with a little more work. At 16.5 yrs old and no more traditional summer camps in his future he may have a tough time getting it done. He decided to work at a highly rated cub scout summer camp this year and not go to camp with the troop. Next summer he'll work at the same camp, after going on a high adventure trip(which he is financing by working at camp) as soon as school is out. I agre

One thing to remember is that this year's crossovers finished the old Webelos program and the new Scout requirements are very similar to the new Webelos program AoL. We had 3 crossovers this year 2 very well prepared by their den leaders, one not so much. The one that isn't so prepared came from a den where the leader didn't heed the roundtable advice to add to the AoL requirements from the old blue book. The 2 that have completed Scout and came in well prepared came from a den that did the new Scouting Adventure pin in addition to the old AoL requirements. Maybe next year's crossovers wil