AwakeEnergyScouter

I'm trying to get my Bears to start learning how to plan an outing with their peers, and I can see we have very far to go. So many social skills to master before they can plop down and get to business in a functional way. They will need to talk over each other quite a bit more, I think, before they really get why they functionally need to all wait their turn to speak. They 100% rely on adults to silence and control people, and while that might be fine for now they need to feel the reins before they will be able to actually steer with them. I didn't go through this scout program so I have

Our council has a Scoutreach program, but I don't know more than that. But thank you for starting this conversation, because it's a really important one! Yes, both BSA and GSUSA have an ethical obligation to serve low-income communities, and it's not a back burner issue. Especially when proven successful, like in the Scoutreach program that you personally ran, youth programs that strengthen civil society are patriotic and helping young people live happy lives is right action. This kind of thing is, according to the BSA mission statement, core to the BSA's raîson d'être. Let's be hone

Scouts for SDGs in the form of Messengers of Peace projects seem like a great thing to point out the existence of to wider society. It creates a forward-looking context for various projects we do, highlighting that we are Creating a Better World. That's exactly what a lot of Gen Z wants to do, as I understand it.

So I have an answer from my husband, finally. For context, he was a cub scout briefly but quit after getting weird vibes from the (female) leader, and has not come along to anything scouting-related other than a Pinewood Derby and a campout two weeks ago. "You know that annoying course I had to take before the campout [YPT, we require all parents to take it if they're going camping with us]? I had no idea that existed." We have to keep explaining because a lot of people have actually never heard about anything we've done to improve scout safety. We may have heard it ad nauseam, and i

That's a great question. I will ask him.

At least right now, my husband definitely needs to hear more about how his scout will be safe in scouting. He's still cracking cynical CSA jokes. He's openly hoping that our cub scout doesn't cross over. Families aren't necessarily all in or all out.

You know, I had to go back and check several times to verify which it was, because it sounds an awful lot like a pack. Initially, I was reluctantly impressed that such small children managed to vandalize a restroom physically 🙃

I'm very sorry, but I honestly thought that JOTA is as well-known an acronym or abbreviation as "jambo" for "jamboree". It's literally the largest scouting event in the world every year, and has been since the 1950s. Just so everyone is aware, Jamboree On The Air (JOTA) and Jamboree On The Internet (JOTI) are the world’s largest digital and radio Scout event promoting friendship and global citizenship. The educational event brings together more than 2 million Scouts every year in October for a weekend of Scouting and friendship. Young people can learn about communications technology

Sorry, my bad! Jamboree On The Air/Jamboree On The Internet JamPuz code. I assume JamPuz is short for Jamboree Puzzle. I saw a lot of calls for anyone from Africa in the chat. We found someone, but clearly people doing the puzzle package with the JamPuz codes were struggling to find scouts from Africa. Our unit mostly did JOTI from home to accommodate various family ongoings, but I think the lowlight was discovering that our council only had a shortwave radio and that we could only really chat with nearby scouts for JOTA. The highlight seems to have been the JOTI Minecraft serve

Highlights? Lowlights? How/where did your unit participate? Who managed to find a JID from Africa? 😂

A slightly different tack, but have you considered an artisan bush knife? After our first standard-issue scout knives, some of us were gifted hand-made artisan bush knives by our parents. It felt like an acknowledgement of that we had grown as scouts and people, since they clearly were a bigger loss to lose and often much more beautiful than the basic knives. And often didn't have a guard.

I liked hearing "I’m also very keen on empowering our Scouts to protect themselves.". I think that can really help plug a lot of small gaps that can otherwise be very hard to plug. Our sleeping arrangements when I was a scout broke a number of YPT rules - girls and boys in the same tent, leaders and scouts in the same tent, sometimes only male leaders. But it was one of those big round canvas tents for 20-30 people in which everyone on the hike or at the camp slept. That's a pretty big audience to avoid waking if you're trying to commit CSA, or to try to groom. And because we all learned

Perhaps just in passing 😉 Part of the Swedish scout law reads "A scout meets difficulties with cheerfulness." We have high social capital in large part because we really believe in that sort of thing (or, at least, a stiff upper lip) and in that problems always have solutions. Perhaps this is Nordic of me, but I don't see why the BSA's problems would be any different.

Sorry, I should perhaps been clearer - that BSA != Scouting was one of my points. I agree completely - the BSA could fold and scouting for men in the US wouldn't die, it would be reborn in some way or other. The BSA can struggle without scouting going the way of the dodo, they aren't the same thing. You can't conclude that society has changed such that scouting will die just because one specific scouting organization is struggling. Although, I wouldn't call the Pioneers or the Hitlerjugend scouting organizations, so I disagree with Wikipedia on what scouting is. Even their less extreme ex

Should the BSA actually fail - to be clear, I don't think it will - I think either GSUSA will become the WOSM NSO also, or a new WOSM NSO will be founded by scouters who used to serve BSA. Even in that extreme case, scouting for men will continue in the US, one way or the other. But disbanding specifically to reform would only make sense if all is lost, and I think it's clear that there's quite a bit left. I understand why a survivor would feel that way, though. Wanting to destroy what/who destroyed you is a thought that is almost bound to arise when you've been very seriously hurt. I thi