carebear3895

One of CSE Surbaughs' big pushes during his tenure was to basically stop young DE's from completely hating their jobs/life and leaving the profession by the dozens. He's been coming up with a few new initiatives to help out the professional folks, I believe this is one of them. 

 The  DA position is simply to relieve some of the stress faced by DE's, while helping them achieve the overall goals of the job.

12 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

I’ve had a few conversations with various leaders from council and the opinion that was shared is that Venturing is their weakest program... lowest numbers and highest attrition rate.  Some leaders from council speculated that Nationals would make Venturing the program for girls (expand the age range to 10 and use the Boy Scout rank advancement).  I’m not sure it is headed that way, but it seems from my council that they do not plan on investing much time or effort in the program.  

I’m fine with Scoutreach but I don’t see STEM or Learning for Life as core to the BSA.  Venturing seems much more core to our mission and could see significant involvement if we advertised more. Based on what I have been hearing, I don’t believe that is the opinion of leadership.

Venture Crews are simply unsustainable. The trend I saw in my old council was that a lot of crews started up to go on a high adventure, but then crashed and burned after. I think the lack of council/national programing and "individuality" is killing it. Getting rid of the Venture promise, sign, and salute in favor of the BSA standard ones was the wrong move. The current award are seen as comical by current venturers. I think the old system of the brone/gold/silver was much better, just needed a little tweaking. TBH, the most successful crews were the ones the had the most Gung-Ho women in them. 

Scoutreach is good in theory, but oh my lord is it ever abused by Professionals for membership numbers. It's embarrassing 

1 hour ago, Jameson76 said:

Yes Yes - Learning for Life Scouts.  A program with great intentions and really can fit a need.  That being said, it is rife with potential for abuse and membership shenanigans.  These Scouts are 14% of the membership total for BSA (2016 numbers).  The councils and nationals solicit monies for their membership, so in many cases no real cost to the participants.  They may not even know they are involved in Scouts. 

 

Learning for life kids are not called "Scouts". Like Exploring, they are considered "participants". L4L is such an oddball program. You'll find close to nothing about it on scouting.org, and probably have never seen a "classroom" (their equivalent of a troop, crew, etc.), but as you said, makes up quite a chunk of BSA membership. I would keep in mind that exploring is technically a program of Learning for life and thus that is reflected in membership. 

12 hours ago, swilliams said:

Venturing could use some serious PR. 

Venturing is easily the most underutilized asset of the BSA. It's comical how forgotten is seems by national. 

In my honest opinion, I wish they would drop all this STEM/Learning for Life nonsense and refocus all those efforts on building up Venturing.

1 hour ago, jjlash said:

Is what included - the info about group presentations and youth versions?  No.  There was a set of documents that came from the office of the CSE.  Ive put the files on my google drive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BXua6tNB3jQ1h8f30SOgRQvltjnmu1KK?usp=sharing

 

Oh Yeah - the kicker that I forgot to mention.  From the document:

 

I would encourage everyone to not jump the gun.  As council training chair I am getting my folks up to speed first so that when we start promoting it to the unit leaders we can answer any questions they have.  Please give your training folks time to get ahead of this so they can support you.

How did you come across all that information if you don't mind me asking? No one in my council,  not even the professional staff, have received anything like that

1 minute ago, RememberSchiff said:

@carebear3895 welcome to scouter.com

Thanks! longtime lurker, but now have decided to join the fun

Get your SPL a stetson.