William T. Hornaday Award

[eaglescout4029]

Does anyone have any ideas of easy William T. Hornaday projects?

 

Also, one of the scouts in my troop would like to do a project in the category of resource recovery (recycling). He wants to post several articles in local newspapers talking about local recyling programs, locations, ect. He also hopes to set up several recyling drop-off locations. His main focus for this project would be to raise public awareness of what the public can be recycling. Would this count as a project or no?

[Eagle92]

Just let the scout come up with the ideas. Don't woryy about easy, worry about having the youth come up with it, organizing it, and doing it. I would think a recycling awareness program would eb a good one. just make sure others are involved.

 

Pierre Part eh? I had a few guys from PP in my canoeing class at S2R a few years back. It was fun reminding them that a canoe is not a pirogue.

[EagleBeaver]

Review http://www.scouting.org/Awards/HornadayAwards.aspx for lots of Hornaday info.

 

"Easy" really doesn't fit well with this award. "Significant project" is used often in the information. These cnoservation projects are supposed to be on a similar scope as an Eagle leadership service project.

 

[Twocubdad]

So how does an interested Scout get started?

 

I've had a couple boys over the years show an interest but they tend to run into road blocks at the council advancement level. Everytime I've asked I've been referred to this one guy who is supposed to be the council Hornaday guru. I even had him come to a troop meeting a couple years ago and do a presentation. Very, VERY short on specifics. He tried to make the award sound much more difficult than the official literature would lead you to understand. His big thing is that project have to be "longitudinal" -- more of a scientific research project where the Scout would study the location over a period of time, complete the project, then go back and repeat the studies to see what effect the project had. Again, I don't find that supported the official literature.

 

When my guys asked how to get started, all you would get was something like, "Well, let me know...." I've since gotten to know this guy a little better and have learned he's just weird. That's about all you get out of him.

 

So if I have a guy who's interested in a Hornaday, does he just go out and do a project? Is there a pre=approval process as with Eagle (heaven forbid!)? Is there an application?

 

Who out there has run one of these?

[CalicoPenn]

Go here:

 

http://www.scouting.org/Awards/hornadayawards

 

It is quite detailed and will give you all the information you need.

[Twocubdad]

It's been a while since I looked at the web site and they added a good bit of concrete info. The new stuff on how to find an advisor and how applications are judged is expecially good.

 

(As an aside, but a lot of this info is presented as audio file of an interview with the national Hornaday guy. Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a really poor way to present the information and the MP3 files take a relatively long time to load. I suppose some web designer decided it would be 'cool' to have audio files. Whatever. I am pleased that the new info is up there.)