I_like_forks

On 2/8/2023 at 4:46 PM, HashTagScouts said:

Yup. Council is charging $2,900 for Jambo.  

And this is the crux of the issue. I attended Finland's national jamboree last summer, and it was a sad moment when I realized it was cheaper for me to fly over to Finland, attend the jambo (as a participant--Rover age), and fly back than attend our own after transportation costs. Their fee was only about $400. Toss in $1000 for flights and $100 for incidentals and you're only a couple hundred above the registration fee alone for ours. Plus, you know, you get to go to Finland. Heck, just this week I got back from the 1st Africa Rover Moot in Kenya, all in I was about $1600.

Also, $1200 for JST is just insane. $1.2k to work there. This summer I'm ISTing the Lithuanian, Serbian, and Upper Austrian jamborees, and I'm looking at about $1600 with transportation for all three. Austrian jambo didn't even charge a fee to IST. Might just be me, but I think that's a heck of a greater bang-for-your-buck than a camp a few hours drive away.

Obviously international travel might not be feasible for youth (though there is a troop from Tennessee attending the Haarlem Jamborette in the Netherlands this summer), but it still goes to demonstrate how the BSA is quickly turning into a program for the upper-middle class and above instead of for everyone, as was intended.

22 hours ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

Unpopular take: This is 2023. Grown men without children in the unit should not participate in overnight activities.

I'm fully aware this would exclude many terrific volunteers from participating in a key aspect of the program. By all means, they are welcome to volunteer in other capacities (staffing a day camp or training parent volunteers, for example). As a 30-something parent, I'd be highly skeptical of a male volunteering at the unit level if that person wasn't also a parent and I'm certain my wife shares my skepticism. And we all know moms drive the big household decisions (like whether kids get to participate in Scouting).

Welp I guess this is the comment to finally bring me out from the lurker caves.

Besides just being straight-up sexist (this is 2023, we should be beyond this), barring men without kids wouldn't just (unjustly) exclude plenty of terrific volunteers, including myself, it would simply kill scouting.

I recently took a job as a DE in my council, and after going around meeting all the units and leaders, let me tell you 95% of units are surviving off the veteran volunteers that have been around for a while. They all say the same thing. They'd love to have some parent volunteers, but the fact of the matter is no parents are stepping up. So barring "grown men without children in the unit"? Instant death sentence. I don't blame the parents, you even said it yourself, your time is limited. Now more than ever it seems. But until something changes and parents can/do start actually volunteering, those veteran scouters without kids in the unit (or in rare cases, young men who were scouts and don't have kids yet such as myself) are what's keeping scouting alive. Trust me, in many cases they do want to retire and pass the torch to the next generation, but there's no one to pass the torch to. So IMO, these men should be rewarded for keeping scouting going, instead of criticized for the mistake of being born male and caring for the future of today's youth.

I could go on and on about statistics and the existence female predators and how the BSA could market YPT better to the masses, but my food is getting cold. I will say this though. As a member of the first generation raised surrounded by these negative stereotypes about men, the pervasive fear of "anyone can be a predator so assume everyone is", and the complete lack of independence until 14-16 because I might get kidnapped or x or y or z (which isn't helped by America's car-dependent suburban lifestyle but that's completely off-topic) in American culture is developmentally harmful. Especially for boys. Does it work to prevent abuse? idk. YPT certainly does but the stats the FBI puts out doesn't paint a pretty picture.