Why bother with finding a chartering organization?

[Eamonn 61]

I'm sitting here trying to remember how many new units I have been involved with starting?

The truth is - Not very many!!

In about a ten year period I can come up with less than ten.

What made remembering so hard apart from my advancing years! Is the number gets jumbled up with the number of calls I made and presentations I made to organizations trying to start new units.

I live in a very small town, with a population of under 5,000. At one time thanks to steel and coal the town was very prosperous.

It has been said in some guide books that we have some of the best Edwardian Architecture in the US.

We seem to have a lot of churches for a town of under 5,000.

I attend the local Roman Catholic church. The services have been cut back due to not having enough priests. So if you are not there early, you aren't going to get a seat.

Sadly a lot of the other churches don't have this problem. When I have visited they seem to have very small congregations and the people seem to be older people. I don't see very many families or middle age people.

These congregations and the Church Councils, all seem to like Scouts and Scouting and will talk your ear off about how their son made Eagle or how they were in Troop number whatever. But they feel they are too old to get involved.

Going in asking them to Charter a new unit is met with a fair amount of enthusiasm, until you ask them to be actively involved as Executive Officers or COR's. Then things change and the answer is no.

I look at what is being posted about Summer Camp Staff being Crews and I have to wonder; why the heck did I waste so much time.

If the Council can be? Or is the Chartering Organization, why are we wasting time with all this Chartering stuff?

Heck- Why not just have the Scout Executive be the Executive Officer of all the units in the Council? The COR and Committee can all be other Professionals.

Wait a minute aren't Camp Staff paid to be on staff? So why not pay the kids who join the Council Chartered units. If nothing else this might help fix the declining membership.

Saying we have Camp Staff Crews to meet a National Camp Standard, may well be a fact, but pulling a kid off the street sticking him or her is a uniform and signing him or her up to a unit that will never use any of the methods of the program is absolute poppycock.

The standard is there to try and ensure camp staffs have some idea of what the program is supposed to be about. This "Camp Staff Crew" is bypassing the rule and harms the campers. They are not being served by people who know what they are doing or have an understanding of the program. It harms Venturing. I keep hearing that Venturing doesn't have "Critical Mass" -Having fake members only makes this worse.

Saying that most of these Staffers are Boy Scouts or in other Ships or Crews, still doesn't change the fact that the Council, who if anything should be setting the example and be beyond reproach is still cheating.

Boy Scout camps are just that having a staff of people wearing green shirts only takes away from the fact that they are Boy Scout camps.

Saying that they need to look different than the staff or the staff has to look different than the campers is bull.

The staff at the National Jamboree wore the uniform of the program they were in and could be identified by a cap!!

While I would have to look it up I feel that a Council does not have the right and should not ever be a CO.

They may well say that the Camp is the CO, but who runs and operates the Camp?

After all the fuss we have seen with inflated membership numbers, I would have thought that this sort of abuse would be the last thing a Council wanted!!

It seems some people never learn.

Ea.