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Hornaday Award - Troop


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We are looking to do a conservation project and thinking of introducing the Hornaday Award at the same time.  If anyone has worked on this award, what knowledge can you pass on to us.  It seems that there aren't many advisors in our area. Is the first step having one of the leaders becoming an advisor.

 

Thanks

JPS

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My son did the Bronze Medal.  Took him 4 years to do the projects, plus another year or 2 of merit badge work.  He used the county Forest Preserve head ranger as his advisor.  Never got the troop award, the troop could have earned it by getting 2/3 of the boys to help on one of his projects.  He was never able to generate that kind of attendance.

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I've had a number of Scouts express an interest in Hornaday over the years. Myself, I've spent a lot of time researching it and trying to figure out how to get the Scouts started and what we need to do to support them. I had the council's Hornaday coordinator do a presentation for the troop. Somehow it turned into a sales pitch for jamboree. I asked three times if he would talk about Hornaday but his only reply was, "we'll get to that in a minute." He never did.

 

The council offered a Hornaday training session at our Scout University, so I signed up. The woman read us the same BSA web site I had started with a year earlier.

 

Spoke to a really great guy at the conservation area at National Jamboree. He really knew his stuff and seemed to have a great program. When I move to Pennsylvania I'll look him up.

 

My take on the whole process is Hornaday Awards are so rare because no one knows how to go about earning them.

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You are right.   When my son decided to work on his, we had to call National and talk to several people to be sent the paperwork giving him instructions on the requirements, and how to proceed.

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  • 1 month later...

A few years ago, I wanted to do a Hornaday project with our local cub pack.I visited with council, and no one had a clue. Eventually, our council advancement chair named himself our council conservation committee. I contacted national, asking for example unit projects that had been approved. What I got back doesn't quite fit the title an "olympics of conservation". Following the description from National, I actually did a lot of research into our project, and worked alongside our advisor, who is the director of a local organization similar to a water conservation district.

 

Assuming PM's work on this site (I only created an account to respond to this), send me a PM, and I'll share the three pack level projects and three troop level projects that National sent me, along with the writeup that I did for our pack project. We earned the first Hornaday Award (of any kind) ever awarded in our council.

 

MaD

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Welcome to the forums. Glad your pack took this on with you!

 

Let's face it, some boys are better at service projects than others. Those simple steps of getting guidance, doing research, and working with an advisor are daunting to most first class scouts. Usually, the most I expect of a first class scout is to present me a plan to take his patrol hiking and camping with maybe an hour of service thrown in for good measure. I routinely expect that of my venturers, and they are often very uncomfortable with that humble objective. Youth willing to mobilize their community are a rare breed.

Keep encouraging your peers to do fly in rarefied air..

 

Messaging does work. And other scouts watching might contact you if their parents allow them to talk to strangers in the Internet. Alternatively, there is a way to open a blog on this site if you want to share your experience in detail ... Not that any of have tried it, but there's always a first ;).

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