Eagle1993

Not sure if this helps, but in my.scouting.org Organization Manager there is a new Family Scouting section. There are start and end dates and if you are a Boy only, Girl only or Boy and Girl unit. Part of me thinks that BSA is simply using the term Family Scouting instead of coed. If you are not an early adopter Pack it simply states your unit is not participating in family scouting. Go to the BSA website. Cub Scouts membership states “youth” while Venturing, Sea Scouts and Exploring is listed as “coed”. They are trying to emphasize that Cub Scouts (and BS4G) are not coed.. they are for the entire family (both boys and girls). It is a messy and confusing message and brings with it to concerns referenced above.

These seems like speculation on speculation but heck, I’m game. Once BSA admitted girls and stated that the program will work with them expect a loss at the Supreme Court if any attempt starts to kick them out. I think you would see the significant loss of FOS contributions and BSA bankruptcy. This isn’t rewriting a handbook and leadership retirement. These are individuals our organization invited to join and kicking them out at a later date would be likened to (and have the same result as) kicking out Jewish or black members. Like it or not, this change is permanent.

Agreed. The most aggressive Troops in my area plan to go full coed (paper Troops if necessary), #3 definitely true. Based on a message on Facebook group I am a member of, the buzzfeed article and quotes from my local council spokeswoman #5 is already in process. Also, I’ve seen several coed countries remove the local option after an initial launch and require all units to go coed (other than for religious reasons) so #4 is likely in a few years. I think a great topic is #6. What does the BSA need to do to meet the needs of today’s youth while making it fun and cool to join? Some Troops and Packs do this well but Nationally it is not happening. Could the UK loan us Bear Grylls for a while?

What data are you using for UK scouting? From what I can see, they have a higher percentage of youth in Scouting than USA and they are growing vs the continuous BSA decline. I’m even including the Learning for Life I’m the BSA numbers which I don’t believe is really Scouting. I also expect BSA will see a big drop as older LDS scouts have a new program (impacting Varsity and Venturing numbers).

@Mattosaurus First, your Eagle Project sounds great. My wife and I have participated in similar food packs and the experience was rewarding and fun for the volunteers in addition to providing desperately needed nourishment. I completely agree with Backpack. Work to rectify the documentation as quickly as possible. Admit you missed this requirement and already started collecting the funds. I don’t believe you would run into an issue unless there are significant concerns regarding your fundraising method. Talking with my father who runs EBORs there are frequent paperwork issues. They would much rather have scouts own and rectify the issue. Attempting to fudge data or having mom or dad run cover (make up fake excuses) is not a good method to address the gap. Keep up the good work and good luck!

Agreed, but I am interested as to why the Canada Scout membership dropped. I don’t think it can simply be explained as coed as UK numbers appear fine. BSA is going coed, that decision has been made. Are there mistakes Canada made that we can avoid and best practices that other coed scout organizations made that we should follow?

I believe the UK scout org is coed. They have about 457,000 Scouts and a population of 5 - 19 year olds of 11.18M. So they have 4.4% of their Scout age population in Scouts. USA has 63.1M in age range of 5-19 so roughly 4.1% of their Scout age population is in Scouts. Note I’m not counting UK girl guides or US Girl Scouts in these numbers (or any other scout organization).

If this is handled similar to how our council is handling Cub Scout camps (both day and overnight) there is no separate weeks for boys vs girls. The council simply states that if you meet the age requirements and are registered them you can attend. They’ll handle the added requirements due to multiple genders.

This was brought up during our district meetings and the answers we were given included posting shower/changing room times (men vs women) and using port-o-johns until facilities are updated. I tend to agree many camps are not ready, and councils will need answers as early as this summer for the girl cub scouts camps.

Given that many youth organization numbers are down, I’d recommed looking at society. - Women working outside the home/dual income families - Internet and gaming improvements - Year round sports organizations - Lack of buy in that an outdoor organization has relevance in today’s society

YPT requires a trained adult leader to monitor and guide any youth leaders. First it isn’t clear the Boy was a youth leader and second it seems clear that he was not monitored by and adult leader. I’d also state that if parents are raising concens the den leader should be addressing them.

“What happens when the girls transition to Boy Scout Troops when they get to be about 11 years old is still being worked out”, Clark said. “The options appear to be all-girl Scout Troops or all-girl patrols within a Boy Scout Troop”, she said. This quote came from a spokeswoman from my council during a newspaper interview. It seems like that all Girl patrol in an existing Troop is definitely being considered.

There should be two adult trained leaders present at all Cub Scout activities. This den leader is blatantly disregarding the scouts’ safety. You should discuss this with the Cubmaster if the den leader is not responding. If interested, I’d recommend you take the BSA youth protection training and you will quickly see that the den leader is violating it.

@qwazse What will really happen if BSA waits until January is that existing Troops will have their existing trained SM/ASM/CC/etc. create a paper “girl” Troop and simply combine forces with their existing Boy Scout Troop. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but I don’t believe there are a lot of people waiting and ready to quickly create truly independent new Troops in the matter of weeks. As a CC of an existing Pack it was a lot of extra work to add girls mid stream. Simply dealing with the crappy BSA IT system, tracking down dues, finding and training new den leaders, reserving meeting locations, etc. while maintaining my existing Pack obligations wasn’t easy. Many BSA volunteers are already heavily loaded and creating a new Troop is a lot more work than simply adding a den. If BSA really wants hundreds of new Troops created in time for spring crossover then I do think it makes sense that they announce and allow Troops to start forming this fall (even if they don’t allow scouts to join immediately). This will allow the IT glitches, recruiting and training of volunteers, going to your local banks to setup new accounts, setting up meeting locations to occur in time for crossover. If they go down the path @Eagle94-A1 mentioned then it is similar to adding a den (probably even easier) and they could get that up and running quickly in January.

Let me make it simple for you... The new program being proposed for girls is not additional Patrols in an existing Troop, but new Girls only Troops. If nationals really wants that to roll out correctly (and not be paper Troops) they will need to allow plenty of time for the the organizational structure to get in place. Adding a den is fairly easy in an existing Pack. Having volunteers generate brand new Troops will take a lot more work and time. If they don’t want girls waiting around until mid 2019 for crossover then nationals will have to launch the program this fall. If nationals is claiming they can launch the program in January next year I expect many girls will be waiting a long time for Troops to form. On the other hand, if they don’t care about paper Troops forming then Jan would probably work.

Not only that but it takes time to generate a new unit. It took me 2-3 weeks of IT hoops and leader training just to add a den in an existing pack. If they want new Troops for girls ready by April 2019 they need to start soft launching this year. That will allow COs to generate the new Troops. Leaders for these troops to be put in place. Bank accounts created. Treasures, CC, SM, ASM all trained. Then what about new equipment? Reservations for meeting locations. There are a ton of activities for a new Troop and I’d expect they’ll need 3-6 months lead time so when the girls join the logistical items are complete. Given that, they should start this effort this fall.

We discussed this with our CO who passed a formal resolution during the board meeting stating they would support either direction that our Pack committee would choose. Our COR and IH supported adding girls. I definitely agree with the comments that the CO should be informed and decide which direction the Pack should take.

This is in order of likelihood a pigtail mafia member will leave a thin mint bomb in your mailbox. 1 - start with sisters of existing members 2 - have them reach out to their friends to recruit them to join 3 - standard Join Scouts Night stuff (flyers, yard signs, emails). Have something fun to do for the kids and ensure some girls that plan to join attend 4 - reach out to existing GSUSA scouts 5 - recruit existing GSUSA Troop leaders 6 - boom... your mailbox just exploded Overall, I don’t see much of a difference from recruiting boys other than making sure parents and girls see that a group of girls are joining. Once they see that, they’ll consider it more for themselves. Oh, and I don’t really recommend intentionally using 4 or 5 above... though we did end up with both (unintentionally). My hands shake a bit every time I start my car.

Paper applications are now being accepted. Most of the girls were able to register online but the. BSA payment system seems flaky after a couple of the parents spent hours using various browsers. One parent said they checked their CC bill and found the BSA had charged them 8 x $33 ($264) (once for each attempt to register). She said she is sure the BSA will refund the money ...🙄 There is an article online with our major paper and I’m working with them so they spell our Pack number correctly. The council is having the other Pack lead the media effort and I’m perfectly content. I think most members in our Pack fall into the category that adding girls is fine... but I don’t think they are looking to be the center of media attention or lead any crusade. One challenge we are now facing. We have three girls who are twin sisters of existing Pack members (all Tigers). Our Tiger den is 26 Scouts. A couple of them have been going to Pack and den meetings but are not members of the Pack. They would like to join but the parents are too busy for more den meetings (for the girls den). So we have started discussions of adding a second girl den, this one dedicated to Tiger girls that would meet same time and place as the boys. My thought is that we can actually provide more separation between the boys and girls as I’ll have another den leader attend and work with them separately. The adult partner will be there for both their kids. Nothing official yet, but we are discussing it.

Given their take on cookie sales that is probably about $12.

I agree with the above. I may have read the other comment incorrectly but I did not see volunteers state that they wanted the separate but equal program. At all of my District and “family scouting” meetings there were questions on where the volunteers would come from given the proposal. There were questions from COs in how this would logistically work. The opinions were either fully implement coed or stay away. I didn’t see much (or any) support of separate Troops. It appears that national is now realizing this.

This was exactly the opposite of what I have heard at our meetings. Most have voiced support of fully coed and rejected this proposal as there were not enough volunteers to implement.

A good point regarding Cub Scouts in that it could establish the mindset in Boy Scouts. I’m not sure what you mean by agenda driven. I find most of the comments in all of these forums agenda driven. Some have agendas to keep BSA boy led. Others have agendas to change OA. I guess what agenda are you alluding to. Only 11.2% of corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies are women (I assume that means 88.7% are men and 0.1% are other). Only 4.2% have female CEOs. Clearly there is a fall off of women leaders somewhere...

I think leadership of coed Packs and BSA4G Troop who will run like coed will have to watch for this and it may be a good reason to ensure there remains some segregation within a coed program. I don’t see much concern at Cub scouts as it is parent run and there are really no leadership roles. At Boy Scout level, for those Troops that combine (they’ll exist) I certainly hope they keep the Patrols separate to allow both boy and girl PLs and even keep separate SPLs. While girls dominating may contine into high school, I’m actually not seeing women leaders take over my workplace (in the USA). I still see male leaders dominate the ranks after you get beyond the first level. This is such a concern in our corporation that I’m being pulled into new training titled Men Advocating for Real Change. Essentially watching for bias within the organization that could be preventing a diversified leadership. I could see BSA as a great method to help build both male (and female) leaders of the future.