BAJ

This was my first thought in response to this thread as well. I made a patch recently for a troop activity. I went to a licensed provider, they looked at my design and told me what changes I’d likely need to make to get it approved in the BSA review process. I grumbled a little, but in the end it got approved and so it has the Scout logo on it. They also told me if I didn’t want to make changes, I could take the Scout logo off and it could be made that way without review, my choice. Having been on this board for a bit now, I would be willing to make a substantial bet that if a patch

I second this — my daughter only had a year or so in Cubs based on when she could join, but she had a great time and was never bored. Awesome and dynamic Cubmaster who knew how to connect with the kids, and an amazing den leader who programmed great meetings. Very focused on doing, not telling or talking. She’s been den chiefing pretty much since she got high enough BSA rank to do so (both for a young den, I think they were Tigers and for an older den as well who just crossed over to Scouts.). Two other great den leaders who came up with great “doing” activities. Even the “talking” one I r

I would also add that a SM should not feel any guilt about (and it was unfair of the old SM to criticize) the need to cancel activities when there is insufficient scout interest. We are a small troop and have found ourselves on the cusp of making the decision to cancel an event because we can’t get confirmed participation (or frankly get scouts… or even their parents… to respond to scheduling emails yay or nay.). We’ve been close to having to cancel things because of leader coverage, both just coverage overall and (since we are a female troop) female leader coverage. We haven’t had to cance

I am neither a lawyer nor any sort of expert in this litigation, but reading the threads on this over the last year, it seems like the mismatch of interests between the insurance companies and BSA has been a driver of delay. BSA wants out of bankruptcy fast, but insurance companies interests may be served by simple delay. It has sort of felt like a catch 22 — if insurers feel like they might pay less by dragging out, it is really is in their interest to do so. But dragging out could lead to the ‘BSA running out of money’ scenario that has been posited. If that happens, that clearly hur

Ours do a separate sign off for the requirements, but the AOLs who have bridged can do that quickly. Doing that gets them familiar with the process of getting things signed off (and their being the ones driving that process) but since they already know pretty much all of it it’s a “quick win.” Then the SM conference can happen and talking about that process is part of talking to them about how Scouts is different than Cubs.

Adding to this good news thread with an entry of my own. My daughter had her Eagle BOR tonight and there are now two Eagles in the family. Just a proud dad post, that is all.

While it won’t hit everyone, I would reach out to the Scout Districts that are close to you (not sure what the district structure is in the relevant Council) to mention the event in the announcements at their monthly Roundtable. Whether that will be effective for June events will depend when in the month Roundtable is held though. Not all troops have someone go to Roundtable, but we do in our area and have gone places and done activities based on ideas that came from there. (While we aren’t on your side of the country, my family lived out there for a while and loved your aquarium very

That sounds a lot like the Cub Scout program I went through.... I think Tiger had just sort of become a thing then...

I also came close to falling out of my chair reading that quote. A number of times on this forum, people have pointed out that BSA’s past actions have “hurt it from the right and left” — from the policies about sexual orientation and perceived prominence of Duty to God/“A Scout as Reverent” alienating more liberal audiences and the subsequent reversal of the policy on sexual orientation, admittance of women, and discussion of diversity alienating more conservative ones. In the last six months, we have demonstrations that continues. In the discussions of the Diversity and Inclusion merit

The reason why I might push more now is really for the scouts who are very close and can “see the finish line” for something that they have been working on for years ... but haven’t gotten that one last merit badge or got their post-project report written and signed ... because, really, what person of any age is really excited by post project paperwork? If things fall apart and do so rapidly, that Scout having to watch the trail getting dismantled around them and losing their opportunity to get to the end would add an additional heartbreak for them on top of the heartbreak of this situa

I suspect you are right for a subset, though certainly not all of them — for the same reasons others have already talked about in this thread: the narrative at the District or Council level that this was only about National, that local scouting wouldn’t be affected, etc. That was certainly what we heard at the FOS presentation right after the bankruptcy was filed. Of people I spoke with that had other daughters in Scouting, this wasn’t a topic that came up frequently or where I heard much concern when it did, I think taking what we were being told pretty much at face value. While I didn

Though how to square that with the principles of Leave No Trace...

Much of this discussion is being shaped by interpretations of why BSA National issued the statement that it did during the protests triggered by the death of Mr. Floyd. Reading that statement, I did not see any of the suggestions made in this thread that National was saying units or leaders or scouts are racist on a broad scale. What I focused on was the statement that BSA had not been sufficiently “brave” about issues surrounding race. I know that Scouting has had a complicated history regarding race issues, though it was not something that I had searched for information about before.

My daughter’s issue arrived in the mail today. It got a very positive response.

One of the things that surprised me on my return to Scouting was the prevalence of cooking requirements. Rank requirements, Cooking MB, cooking requirements in Camping MB. Taking numbers of requirements as a proxy for importance, it is clear that BSA believes that it is really important for scouts to be able to cook.

I bought one about a year and a half ago. Definitely a good hat. One complaint was the nice wool felt was very warm at summer camp in the hot and humid, and had to get a cooler model. But am back to wearing it for cooler weather.

Our scout troop is trying to do a toy collection to feed into the Marines Toys For Tots. The thought was that because of the economic fallout of COVID there may be lots o kids not getting much of a holiday this year, and that was something the Scouts really related to.

According to a New York Times article, the total number of claims is now above 82,000. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/us/boy-scouts-abuse-claims-bankruptcy.html

Is this the case even for really small units? In our troop (still small through growing some), I’ve been very aware of critical mass effects — for example, that we don’t have enough adults to share leader load, that when we are small there’s the risk of an activity getting scheduled and then only have 1 or 2 scouts end up actually participating when the day comes, etc. I’d assumed that there would be a benefit in merging two units that were weak that way (vs. being weak in terms of putting on a bad program), but would be interested in hearing more if that hasn’t been the experience.

Though I don’t tend to come to a scouting board for the politics, if this is the discussion of the hour, I would submit for balance that there were apparently calls to boycott the Girl Scouts because Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez had been a past member. Let’s at least appreciate that we have diversity in rage stoking mobs, even just in the niche market of “rage aimed at scouting organizations.” https://www.newsweek.com/ocasio-cortez-ridicules-writer-girl-scout-cookie-boycott-1355802

Having gone through both recently, this is an absolutely true statement. There was some discussion of the need to stand back and the need to let scouts fail/failure as a teacher, but that was a small part among a large swath of other material. One person in my WB class mentioned that they’d taken back the lesson and in the weeks between weekend 1 and 2 gone from being a mostly adult led troop to a youth led one, because the amount of information provided, so that is evidence of “success” for extreme cases. But I really think @ynot hits the crux of it: Failure of the scouts to succes

Does anyone have any inside insight into what this means? I have a Scout who is a couple weeks away from starting to plan her Eagle project, which she wanted to be Hornaday eligible as well.

Sure was in my experience. I took the online scoutmaster position specific training quickly (since I was coming back to Scouting from a long absence) and there were parts of it that were the worst virtual training I had ever experienced. Our leadership in our troop still jokes about the module on the structure of a troop committee meeting. Long time scouter suggested I do the in person if I had the time because the person teaching it was awesome. I did and am really glad I did. Definitely validates that in person can be much much better than the online “(not really) equivalent.”

Prepping food individually is definitely an option (@Treflienne mentioned their troop is doing that in my thread about my project, and some other troops in my area are doing it as well) though it is logistically complicated. Agree on “just add hot water” options, though there would still be a need to make sure one person was doing the pouring to avoid everyone touching the same pouring container getting their own water. Our troop definitely settled on the foil meals option early. We didn’t do it scout by scout bringing theirs from home since we still wanted to try to do something as

I am so sorry that it wasn’t a good experience for you. I feel bad now for the cheerleading that I did before you headed out. While I wasn’t always having fun and did periodically roll my eyes at portions of the proceedings, I did find the overall experience a positive one (though having gone through both weekends now, I felt like I got more out of Weekend 1 than Weekend 2). It also sounds like I had the benefit both of a patrol that clicked (to the point that some of them were rolling their eyes at the same time I was) and also a much better staffed/run effort. Our troop guide was e