Treflienne

"Where would you go?" I actually thought about this a good bit, pre-2017, in relation to where would I go if I left GSUSA. And I read about BPSA and AHG. These organizations had, in my mind, two or three very very big drawbacks. (1) lack of good camps in the vicinity of where I live -- this area is rather built up and the scouts (both BSA and GSUSA) have owned properties for years which have remained relatively undeveloped and available for nearby camping, while suburbia has swallowed up a lot of land. (2) lack of existing units in the area. While the program materia

Absolutely. We did what we could, when we could. Some things we had to wait on that were beyond our control - for example, one potential CO was not be able to consider the idea of taking on a new troop until after they had completed a change of institutional head. So we did what we could, when we could, while hoping that the other things would eventually work out. For much of 2018 we did not know whether we would really get a troop up and running.

Of the newly added scouters (the parents of the girls) only one dad had been a scouter before (but with cub scouts, not boy scouts). We have a lot to learn. Sharing a committee with the boys, and learning from them, has been extremely helpful.

We, and the troop we were linking with, assumed that the boys troop and the girls troop would have the same committee. When it came time to turn in the paperwork we learned from the council that the committee members of the boys troop would only be committee members of the girls troop if they turned in an additional paper form. The COR, CC, and a few boys troop committee members did so. So now we have some people on both committees, some offficially only on the boys committee, and some officially only on the girls committee. (It is a bit of a mess.) The whole committtee meets all togeth

Well, . . . we got a troop started February 1st, and the girls could start being scouts. (Highly important to the girls who were eager to start.) From that point of view it was successful. I felt like that all spring and summer. I'm just about feeling like we have caught up. I'm not really sure how we could have done it in a different order. To recruit adults to work with the troop, we first needed to recruit their daughters to want to be scouts. A non-linked troop might have been a very different situation. But we were hoping to link with one of several boy scout

Nope. The best way is for the already enthusiatic scouts (or scouts-to-be) to invite their friends and sisters. We started with 2 interested girls. Six more joined because they were invited by friends (the orginal two or scouts recuited by the original two). Three found us via the web (beascout or our own website). Two girls found us because the local boys' troop advertised among their families. We took part in two scouts/cubs recruiting sign-up events. ZERO SCOUTS found us through sign-up events.

@Calion, we did it in a completely different order. Your points, ordered roughly as we did them, were: 1 Decide what kind of unit you want to start. This was easy. My daughter wanted a Scouts BSA troop she could join 9 Train the adult leaders. I, at least, did IOLS nearly a year before launch date 13 Recruit Scouts. The really essential item for getting a new troop started was a critical mass of scouts. Recruiting started around a year before launch date, with a couple of highly interested families and ramped up about 3-4 months before launch date. 15 Have your first

There are older brothers of our scouts, with great skills that they learned in scouting, that I would like to tap to help with our Scouts BSA girls -- were they not away from home attending college. There are also older cousins, male and female, in their twenties, with Eagle Scout and Venturing backgrounds, that I would love to tap to help out -- except that they live out of state. We live in a town which people leave at age 18. And to which people move at around age thirtyish, already married, and either with preschool children, or thinking about soon having children.

The www.ScoutsBsaDcGirls.org website is great! Our troop ended up going with using the services provided by bsahosting.org Our committee member who was looking into this liked that the website came with email lists for the troop with a reasonable privacy policy that did not involve selling our data. They have a template troop website that a troop can customize.

What kind of cooking and dishwashing? Chopping vegetables, getting lots of prep dishes dirty, setting up a full three-dishpan wash station -- which might need to be refilled if kids are sloppy about getting food into the dishwater? Or rehydrating dehydrated meals, eating out of a single cup/bowl per person (or eating out of the meal pouch), then licking your cup and spork clean and calling than good enough?

I agree that 11-13+ girls certainly have the attention spans for 2 hour meetings. Our Scouts BSA girls' troop has 1.5 hr evening meetings. The meetings always feel too short, especially given the over-long opening ceremony and announcements done jointly with the boys troop -- but given the schoolnight evening, there is not time to go longer. (A few years ago the 4th grade girl scout troop I was associated with, on the afternoons they got out of school early, had 2 hour meetings, and the longer meeting format let us do more during the meeting time.) I could see that with scou

If we reach this point, this is when I am looking for some sane and sensible support from the chartered organization. If I remember right, the issue of transgender leaders has come up in Girl Guides (UK).

I will point out that requiring a woman leader present when girls are involved is not unique to BSA. GSUSA also requires there to be at least one woman leader present (i.e. for GSUSA the require minimum two unrelated adults can be two women, or one-woman-and-one-man, but not two men.) There are several ways BSA can get rid of the double standard, if people push hard to get the double standard removed. 1) Allow adult leadership to be men-only. Some parents, including me, will balk at this and not permit our daughers to go, depending on the event. (Would I really want to send a sma

These, too, come in all degrees of strictness of avoidance, and I am certainly sympathetic to those scouts who have religious/cultural reasons for avoiding certain foods. We certainly don't want to be causing friction between a scout and his/her parents, and we want to be welcoming to scouts in all cultural groups. I am much less sympathetic here. My general attitude towards the scout is that if you don't like what someone else planned and cooked, then next time you can volunteer to be the meal planner and cook. In practise, scouts will sometimes eat at camp things th

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence and ignorance". I don't know about that specific instance. But I have encountered huge quantities of incompetence and ignorance when it come to dealing with food allergies. Well intentioned people, who think that they are being helpful, and have absolutely no clue how ignorant they are, and how pointless their efforts to be allergy-friendly are.

Acrylic paint works well, too, if you happen to already have that in your craft supplies. Turned the scouts loose with the scrap fabric box, the paints, the beads, the yarn, the entire set of craft supplies. Those scouts who were interested came up with a really nice flag as a collaborative project after an afternoon's work on a school holiday afternoon. (Probably helped that it was an older crowd . . .11-13-year-old girls.) Since then they've taken the flag on most camping trips, to summer camp, and (as a one-patrol troop) used it as a stand-in for the troop flag we don't yet ha

Yes Scout vespers. ("Softly fall the light of day . . .") And I know a bunch of Girl Scout songs of that ilk that my daughter tells me we cannot sing in Scouts BSA. ("On my honor", "Girl Scouts Together", "Green Beret" . . .)

When I did YPT (in 2018) I thought it very odd that 4 scouts in a 4-person cabin could have an age range of more that two years, but 4 scouts in a 4-person tent could have a max age range of 2 years.

You have just described what I have observed: Many people in the general population don't "get it" concerning severe food allergies/intolerances. This is why some people with severe food allergies bring their own food. Or only eat items than they can peel (like a banana or orange). Or only eat food someone else has brought if it arrives in its original sealed food-manufacturer packaging, if they themselves can read the label, and if they can serve their portion before other people cross-contaminate it. For this reason, some colleges now have major-allergen-free kitchens/servi

I agree. Sometimes it seems what it takes for a person to "get it" concerning allergens and cross-contact is to either acquire a relative with food allergies (or intolerances), or to develop food allergies of their own. If all they learn is that some people need to be really careful about food, and that you should talk with the person to find out in what ways they need to be careful -- then they will have learned something really valuable.

I've become fond of tri-ply cookware for campfire cooking -- stainless steel with an aluminum core that goes all the way up the sides of the pot. Distributes heat well enough not to burn on the irregular heat of the campfire, but can be put in the dishwasher when you get home. (Not reccomended by the manufacturer for campfire cooking, but seems to do well, and I bought a cheap off brand.)

Dealing with kids and dietary restrictions, it is important to get adequate information out of families. "I avoid milk" might mean "Well, actually I drink lactose-free milk, and I have no concerns about cross contamination" or it can mean "I have a history of anphylactic reaction after being splashed by milk".

@Liz I realize I may have come across as critical. I did not mean to do so. I just wanted to illustrate for those not used to cooking for limited diets the difficulties that can be involved, depending on the potential severity of the reaction to the offending food. And I realize that some will risk "natural flavors" knowing that the quanitity of allergen (if contained in the product) is likely to be low, especially if the potential food reaction is not life-threatening. But some people do not want to take that risk for themselves, or impose that risk on some-one else's kid.

That McCormick Bag n Season mix contains "natural flavors" and is not labelled as "gluten free". It could be hiding a gluten-containing grain such as barley. Doesn't look like a safe food to me for a kid who strictly needs to avoid all gluten-containing grains. (Unless you got more info from the McCormick company than is listed on their package.) Mainly I am being sympathetic. It can be very difficult to plan menus for people with severe food intolerances. It also illustrates why some kids with severe food allergies or intolerances prefer to bring their own food -- they simply c

Really? What about you others, do you think your scouts know what the World Crest is for? In my ignorance of current BSA custom, I have made sure that all new scouts in our Scouts BSA troop know what all the parts of the World Crest symbolize. (The discussion can fit nicely in the scoutmaster minute section of a meeting, after an influx of new scouts.) Probably that is just the influence of my WAGGGS/GSUSA-TOFS background. The international friendship/brotherhood aspect of scouting is important to me. And really, there are some decided similiarities between the WAGGGS trefoil