Campfire Fairy

My council's wood badge training recently came to a close, and I'm proud to say that I was a part of it. A handful of Venture youth scattered across the council, myself included, spent the last 3 days of Wood Badge in one of the patrols (go Bears!), helping to explain such things as the fundamentals of a leave-no-trace campsite, as well as running a problem solving round robin as one of the training modules. I must admit, I didn't know what to expect going into it, but I came out of it with a good experience and a fun weekend to talk about for quite a while. Venture Crew 1 (of course, the numb

I recently found out that my youngest sister's troop is disbanding (is that the right word to use?) this year. The girls will be in seventh grade in the fall, which is about the time when a) they start working on their silver award, and b) when I started getting bored with the program. Granted, I stuck with it until I earned my silver, and for another year after that, but once I joined Ventures I had no need for the GSA. It was too much fluff and not enough fun. I was talking with my mom the other day, and from what I understand, the main reason is that the moms who were running the troop

The 2 girl scout camps in my area have summer programs as well asorganized winter camping. The winter camping programs run Friday nights-Sunday afternoons and the activities vary. There are Mom-and-Me weekends, where each of the scouts (typically Brownies) brings their mom, and a similar weekend with dads. There are open-scheduled weekends when troops can reserve units for winter camping to earn badges, or just for fun. Both camps also contain ropes courses- low ropes at one, high at the other, unless things have changed since I've last heard. And I can tell you for a fact that non-girl s

Beautifully spoken, scoutldr. *applauds*

Wow, it's been a while since I've been to the forums here... they've updated and everything, and I feel all shabby and inadequate with a little half star rating... like I'm underdressed in a really expensive restaurant. So, some time may have passed since I was here last, but old habits die hard and I just have to throw in my two cents... An awful lot of people have responded to this thread who -aren't- Merlyn, despite the specifications of the title. Although I suppose if OGE wanted this to be a one-on-one conversation he would have privately messaged Merlyn instead of making it a

NeilLup- I'm afraid I may have been a bit confusing and ambiguous in my last post. I agree that it is necessary to have a female adult in attendance during co-ed overnight outings, and I more than understand the legalities behind this when the what-ifs and could-have-happeneds -do- happen. My sometimes overactive imagination can certainly drum up a number of ridiculous but not impossible allegations and accusations that could be devastating during a legal proceeding, and I certainly buy into the better-safe-than-sorry theory. To a reasonable extent. Before I go on, I am forced to ask what

Just to state my opinion in all this, I have retracted my comment that it was okay for a dad to be a girl's leader because I have been proven wrong with a reference source. However, my "interpretation," since that seems to be everyone's favorite word in this thread, is that of the two leaders present on an outing, one and only one is absolutely -required- to be registered with the BSA. I would like to think that I am perceptive enough to decide, after meeting the woman who will be my adult chaperone for the outing, whether or not I can put my safety and my trust in this person. And if I

*graciously retracts her comment*

Hey. Being a girl in a co-ed crew, I can help you out here... hopefully, anyway First of all, it is my understanding that yes, if the girl's father attends, he is her "chaperone" and you do not need a female leader. This only works for that one girl, however. She can't bring a friend and have her dad be the friend's chaperone, too. As far as female leaders go, no, they don't need to be registered with the BSA. My crew has always been desperate for female chaperones to the point where we almost steal them from other crews, but we've also had a few young women who were students of one

OGE- You're hired. Uh, for in the future... or... something...

I like the camping/rock climbing/backpacking/general outdoorsiness that I do with Ventures. I also like little kids (in a very NON-Michael-Jackson kind of way!). I like to draw... I'm into photography... I like animals and have aspirations of being disgustingly rich when I get older so I can own a white tiger, an elephant, a black panther, a panda, a chimpanzee, 2 horses, and your typical dogs, cats, rabbits, and small lizards. Oh, and a cute little green snake whom I will name Mr. Squiggles. I'm a movie freak but I hardly watch any tv at all, and I confess to having unhealthy obsessions with

I got a Venture uniform shirt... and a fleece liner for my sleeping bag... and a backpacking backpack... and a backpacking tent... and that awesome pair of hiking boots I so subtly pointed out to my parents that were 50% off or something crazy like that in the Cabela's catalog... and a tricked out, impressive pocketknife... and a spiffy leather-bound 3-ring binder thing with my initials on it in gold to keep my oh-so-efficient secretarial Venture meeting notes in... oh, and I got a horse. And then I woke up. Okay, so, Santa must have given away all the exciting camp-y things to you p

I'm curious (and maybe I should be putting this out in the open discussion forum, because I'm quite sure that very few of the male members of this forum pay any attention to this little corner of the world) as to how the boy scouts, youth and adults, view the Girl Scout program. Be brutally honest, and please share any observations you may have regarding girl scouting. As for the female members/girl scout members out there reading this, feel free to share your own opinions on the mission of girl scouting and what you think the "Girl Scout Image" is, generally, nation-wide. I'm curious to

Since someone else resurrected this thread, I'll have my say now. Yes, I admit, I didn't want to bring this one back from the dead if no one else was interested... I figured, I missed my chance to rant and rave about the troop mentioned in the article Beaver was so kind enough to post in here. But now, thanks to Anne, I can. I think it's precisely troops like that one that deny girl scouts any considerable amount of respect. Spas and yoga and shopping trips and the like are not the kind of events that teach the girls to be strong, ambitious, competent women and community leaders. If anyt

*jumps up and down and waves* I'm here, I'm here! Sad to say, this is quite obviously one of the least popular places on here... but I guess it's to be expected on a boy scout forum. But I would hope that more of the adult advisors, particularly those who are active in a Venture crew, might be interested in Girl Scout affairs as they may at some point have a girl scout Venturer in their midst and would be anxious to learn a thing or two about the way girl scouts works, the way the girl is learning a crazy amount about how boy scouts works (I know I certainly did when I first started

DS, a big thumbs up for being involved in the Girl Scout section of this forum! I think that is very cool of you. Ozemu, good luck finding your koala I think the traveling mascot is a really neat idea (I can't believe I used the word neat... usually I'm so much more creative with my vocabulary... *is shamefaced*). I learned something interesting today... koala bears don't drink water! I think that's weird. But then again, I don't drink water... so I guess I'm weird. ...oh well, it's nothing I haven't heard before.

I'll be the first one to answer my own topic... just because I can answer for my own crew... I would say there are about 20-25 members (OGE and OT can correct me if I'm off... I'm a horrible estimater. All I can tell you for sure is that we have about 8 or 9 active youth-- the rest are inactive because they're away at college... again, correct me if I'm wrong!) I would say close to half of our crew is made up of girls, and we're very proud of this fact. We have a couple of young'uns, but for the most part, we're all in the 17-20 range. Which is great because we've got a pretty matu

Okay, so I kind of copied purcelce's topic from the Open Discussion forum, but I'm curious about the other Venture crews out there... How many youth members does your crew have? Do you have any girls? Age range/numbers of your youth? How many adult advisors does your crew have? How long have you been in existence? What is your crew's concentration (i.e. outdoors, community service, religion, etc.) What fundraisers, if any, does your crew do? How do you recruit new members? On average, how many activities/events does your crew have monthly? What do y

Just have to throw in my trivial two cents... The word pablum (I understand it's a brand name as well, but the words itself) means something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic. It was the Word of the Day on the 19th. Now I can tell all my friends who make fun of me for getting a Word of the Day email that it actually came in handy... Sorry for disrupting the thread, I just wanted to share my random intellect with you fine people. ...okay, so I wanted to share my intellect with people who couldn't tell me to shut up and refuse to listen. Now you a

Heh... my first opportunity to introduce in-print resources to support a comment I made and it's about something ridiculous... Oh, well. I'm over it.

SM406, don't take it personally. Every state has something worth a good (bad?) joke. http://pages.infinit.net/pl74/jokes/jokes1.htm#Joke5 That's proof for you.

I enjoyed the ironic fact that the man who sucked his people for all they were worth, whose lavish palaces were scattered here and there, who could afford handfuls of Saddam-decoys but not to feed his people, who could so valiantly send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fight his neighboring countries (and then some), was finally caught cowering in a hole, hidden under a rock like the vicious snake he is. That humiliation alone might have been worth the wait, if you'll excuse my insensitivity for those who fought and died or were injured trying to find the atrocious weasel. And

I have can attest to le Voyageur and acco's statements that the ratings of sleeping bags don't necessarily apply to everyone. Like Eamonn, I can't stand being cold. And maybe I'm just a little abnormal in my exceptional ability to freeze my butt off, but my NorthFace blue kazoo mummy bag does not cut it for me... maybe in the summer, but when we went backpacking in the NJ Pine Barrens in October, a weekend when the weather was in the upper seventies during the day, and (to normal people ) considerably warm at night for the season, I still froze. Then camping in Gettysburg I shoved the mummy ba

There's gotta be something wrong with me... it took this thread to remind me that Christmas is in 12 days. Well, okay, I knew it was in 12 days, because I've got the majority of my Christmas shopping done, but somehow in the craziness of it all, I forgot that I get presents, too... Thank you hops for resurrecting this thread, because it gave me some ideas to give my parents-- who thank you, too, I'm sure! Apparently I'm hard to shop for... which is ridiculous, because I'm about the most easy-to-please person ever... Anyway, I know she might even forget she said anything, but a milli

That's great, Eamonn! I must admit, I'm slightly disappointed that I was born a girl and not a boy... I think I would have had a lot more fun being a boy scout than I had when I was a girl scout. Maybe it was poor choosing of troops, but we never went camping or anything like that(not to knock girl scouting-- if you have a daughter, I encourage her to try it out for herself!! ), and all the Boy Scouts I've talked to only have great things to tell about their early (and recent, of course!) Boy Scout experiences. *sigh* But, luckily, I joined up with Ventures and have had a blast. The