Caring for troop gear

[evmori]

They write down the names of the Scouts they gave the gear to. They also give the names to the PL's.

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

TRoop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[KoreaScouter]

It's been an evolutionary thing for us. When I became SM for our troop, we were using a giant chuck box that took three men and a boy to lift; everything was in there. No patrol boxes, so all the patrols were trying to cook around the same box at the same time using the same gear -- chaos.

 

We built smaller, lighter patrol boxes, outfitted each one with stove, lantern, cook gear/utensils, mallet, etc., etc. Each patrol has a patrol QM, primarily responsible for patrol gear. He reports shortfalls to troop QM, whose dad happens to be our committee facilities/equipment chair. Much better ownership & accountability. Our troop and patrol QMs will square away gear between outings if necessary. Not their favorite pastime, but it reinforces their sense of ownership during the outings...they won't let anything get put away wet, dirty, other-than-nifty, or they take care of it themselves later.

 

We're a good ways from where we want to be on dishwashing, though. We use the 3-pot method with fair-sized plastic tubs. It takes more effort than I think should be necessary to keep suds water hot and clean, keep from mixing patrol cookware, and get everyone's personal eating kits cleaned. Maybe it's because dishwashing is one area where all the patrols use a single dishwashing station, rather than patrols doing it separately. I cringe at the notion of setting up three sets of everything -- I already think we're hauling too much stuff out there anyway. How do the rest of you do this?

 

KS

[Bob White]

Each Patrol on its own. Individuals are responsible for their personal gear and the scouts on clean-up on the duty roster do only the patrol cooking gear. The clean-up scouts are the cooks at the next meal so they get a second look at everying to make sure it's clean.

 

Bob

[Bob White]

(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[ozemu]

In my previous post I mentioned that my PL's decided to clean at our hall after each camp. This is not the ideal. Rather it is a royal pain in the nether end to all concerned and raises issues of scouts not coming to that meeting and other scouts who didn't camp doing cleaning etc.

 

I'm hoping, and continuously remind them, that they are only doing this because they didn't get their act together on camp. Instead we could be playing games etc....

 

Next step is to get it done at camp by driving them and then letting them compare at the next meeting (while playing games) the previous alternative.

 

I expect that in this way they will learn for themselves the benefits of cleaning once and cleaning well while still at camp.

 

We have already gone through the arriving at camp and opening the box to find green furry things in the frying pan. So I geuss that cleaning at the hall is step 2 and a small improvement. Step three is success (I hope) in reaching the ideal using experiential learning.

 

Sorry to bore you all but my first attempt was inadequate.

[ozemu]

(This message has been edited by ozemu)

[red feather]

We use individual patrol boxes with one dutch oven, two iron skillets, a griddle, cooking utensils, condiments, hot chocolate mix (if they wish), crisco and paper towels. It is the responsibility of the PL or Acting PL to ensure the correctness of the box, if something is missing or not restocked they are to find a way around the problem (Analyze, Adapt, Overcome).

 

Each scout is responsible for their own eating utensils. We also use currently two wash buckets shared by the troop, I hope to begin the three bucket system. We use metal buckets as they seem to hopd up better during the winter and in storage.

 

Tents are currently not assign to a particular patrol but I have been trying over the years to get that started.

 

BobWhite I like your idea of the cleaners are the next cooks. I will bring it up at our next PLC.

 

YIS

[Scoutmaster Ron]

We recently pulled all paper plates,napkings plastic knives forks and any food (ie: hot chocolate mix,pancake mix) from all patrol boxes due to an abuse. We wanted to stressm the importance of mess kits