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Does Your Council Support Venturing


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The discussion on the VLSC brought up this idea and I thought it deserved its on thread

 

How supportive is your Council of Venturing? how knowledgeable are the Council level Volunteers of the program and is Venturing is seen as a viable program." Currently I have to rate our council in the cant tell for sure category to moderatley supportive

 

Now, in my Council, I should add the Venture adults, along with a handful of youth have spearheaded establishment of a COuncil YOuth Crew leadership group and when the youth meet, so do the adults. We do have an Assitant Council Commisioner for Venturing who is trying to get District Assistant Commissioners appointed and at our last meeting the Scout Executive appointed to be the Venture liason to Council showed up. Did I mention we meet in the Council offices? On a sunday night? Heck, maybe Council supports us more than I thought, and just maybe we adults will become "Council" at some point, what is your experience

 

 

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Well, as I said we have a Council Assistant Commissoner for Venturing, he has asked the District's to appoint a District Assisstant Commissoner for Venturing, so far out of six Districts, one has over a six month period of time. Council support would mean leaning on the disricts to appoint someone

 

The Membership Chairs of all the district's have recruitment plans for Packs and Troops, but the crews are on their own.

 

The Council Training Chairman and District Chairmen do not place Venture training either or adult or youth on the calender although Cub and Boy Scout activities are listed. They have been sent the dates, but they dont show up on the calender.

 

Last year our council had its first University of Scouting, in the literature a leader could take classes from the College of Cub Scouts, College of Boy Scouts, and Junior College of Venturing. Is that what you call a subtle, subliminal message?

 

Council support would be to assure Assistant Commissioner's of Venturing would be appointed in each District. The Rectuiment plans of each District would require a section on crews and the training calender would have Venturing training listed.

 

That would be support, at least thats what i think

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Our council executive has been very supportive of the Venturing movement. He really tries to listen to what the youth venturers have to say and he always lets us run with our ideas. Perhaps, it's only because he's not worrying about it, as it's our time if it fails and it makes him look good if it succeeds. But we get to have our activities. In addition, our council is making an effort to include Venturing in many of the whole council events, including a campout, where a few years ago Venturing really didn't fit in the mix. At times, I think the Venturing Program is like the stepchild of our council, trying to fit into an already established family, but at least our council executive, the venturers, and the advisors are trying to make it work.

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I really like the analogy of the Stepchild fitting into the well established family.

As a district we are moving ahead. We have a ADC Venturing. As far as I know we are the only district to have one. There are four districts in the council.

Again as a district we are pushing for all of our units to offer the Full Family of Scouting.

The problem with this is small crews.

We hope to overcome this by getting them to network activities and plan super activities as a district activity until such a time as this is no longer needed. There is talk of a trip to Europe. We will see what happens on that one.

We only have one Crew that is a "Stand alone" Crew these guys were an Explorer post in Greater Pitt. Council. They are into Nero and attract a lot of youth from all over the place.

As a Council we are slowly getting our act in order. Sad to say there was a little bit of messing around with numbers in the early days, but that is now behind us.

We did have a Council Venture Activity Day a few weeks back. There were about 50 or so Crew members. Which wasn't too bad as there was a lot of other School activities going on that day, a lot to do with some kind of band whatever.

We had a Council Program meeting on Monday and for the first time there was a Venture group.

We have a long way to go but at long last we are starting to take steps along the right road.

Eamonn

( OGE-I tried to reply to your message, but it came back? So I send it to the address that you gave me. Let me know if you have it.)

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Eamonn you bring up some interesting points.

 

First, one of our council's crew hurdles is not so much the small crews, but rather the crews that are not outdoor crews. We run into a lot of problems when we try to organize the youth to meet or when we try to put together programming for the Crews. Our first major council crew camping event we invited all of the crews that were registered in council, the SCUBA crews werent interested, neither were some of the arts and hobbies crews, nor were some of the other more specialized crews nor some of the camp posts. Any suggestions how we get them all to come together, a united stepchildren front rather than all of us trying to get individual attention from their parent Council?

 

Your comment about other school activites is not ignored. My crew, too, runs into that situation all of the time. And that crazy thing called a band sucks up a lot of the fall weekends. Our policy is we run the trip with who can show up, as long as we have two deep leadership (of the appropriate gender).

 

Finally, I agree with you fully, Venturing Crews have a long road ahead of them, but steps are being made. Baby steps as they are most of the time, but steps are being made. I've been involved in Venturing Crews for awhile now and I've seen great progress. The fact that the road is still ahead of us, should be an exhilerating feeling, though, the Venturing Crews have the oppertunity to set the tone for how crews will be for the next generation of crew members.

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Packsaddle,

 

You are on the right track, every Troop does not need a Crew, or rather, every CO with a troop does not need a crew. An "Area" Crew taking from 3-5 troops (boy and girl) is more likley to have success because then resources from a single enitiy are not as stretched.

 

I think bigger crews, fed by a number of troops is the best way to go

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We are a very small crew too. Only a month or so old as well. Our council does have a person in charge of venturing, the district director. He has been supportive, we asked for adult training and he set it up for this weekend. I am anxious to see what kind of opportunities will be available from the council.

 

I'd like to see more information put out to the troops about venturing, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions and non-understanding of the program.

 

venture mom

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Hops, 3 Position 10 Meter Air Rifle. 20 shots prone, 20 shots kneeling, and 20 shots standing. The 10 Ring is this size o. We had our first female shooter show up tonight. I heard a vehicle pull up and asked who's there, one of my shooters says, "A girl, and she has her own gun!" I hope she stays. I could see the guys taking their time with their shots and being more polite than normal with each other and her. We're going backpacking with a party of 9 next weekend. Can't wait!

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