The New BSA Strategic Plan

[moosetracker 132]

The only thing I see as possibly spreading the Adult leadership too thin with having an older venture program, within the troop, is that you still needed the two deep adult leadership for the various outings each group may choose to do. Unless you get your CO & parents to buy into allowing the venture patrol to take off on their own with no adult leadership.

 

When our troop had this it was a blessing because we had too much Adult leadership, and it was a good thing to spread them out to tasking them with attending different events..

[pchadbo 60]

Ok lets see if I have this right, we don't keep kids in Scouting because we don't get out enough but the reason scouts leave is because scouting is too hard?

 

Cub scouts doesn't keep the kids involved and outside so it is Cubsouts fault that the scouting movement is shrinking?

 

Scouting is gay/atheist unfriendly so we can't recruit those kids so it is National's fault?

 

The uniform is uncool so we do away with a 100 year tradition?

 

Too many Kids (and leaders) think of Boy Scouts as Web III so it is the fault of the Cub Scout program?

 

Mom and dad aree too busy to take Junior to scoouts so we give up?

 

EXCUSE ME BUT. . .

 

Reading this thread I see a common theme and have no idea how to fix it

THE KIDS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM THE ADULTS ARE!!!!!

 

We need to make Cub Scouts fun and keep the "outing" in scouting to get them to Boy Scouts.

 

We need a good Pack to Troop transitional program.

 

We need a good active troop program to keep the kids interested and keep the "outing" in scouting.

 

We need help from the professional to do this.

 

Then we need to get out of the way and let the Kids play.

 

We can, and many of you have, spend years trying to figure out these things on this forum and others like it.

 

We need to keep the Kids as the focus and decide do we want a program trying to be all to all or do we want a smaller (not a bad thing) program dedicated to the traditional scouting skills and values because the hybrid thing wil NOT work.

 

[moosetracker 132]

You got some of it there pchadbo.. But you forgot..

 

Split the troop up into two age group, because the big kids don't want to be with the younger kids.. (strangely enough there is another thread going currently going that wants to kick out the tigers because they are too little & drop out too quickly & burn out the Adult Leaders.) So between the two we need to divide CS & BS into 4 or more seprate groups.

 

Let us also not forget that Kudu says: Kids want Soccer

 

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With cubs maybe it is true that alot of boys leave the program in cubs, but the majority join the program at the Cubs level also..

 

Kudu has much success with recruiting without using the cub program, but with most of our BS units few come in to the troop level without having come from cubs. My son did get his friend to join BS.. But typically if scouting isn't their thing by 5th grade, then they have been spirited away by some other program.. be it baseball, soccer, or tap dance..

 

So alot of boys come in through the cub door and exit before reaching boy scouts.. still others continue on into the Boy scout door.. More so then the majority of units can credit to have recruited on their own..

 

(This message has been edited by a staff member.)