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While in Athens one summer, my son tried to find the scout shop to by me their equivalent of a council patch. But the shop (or the apartement that served as their HQ) was closed. I always kind of hoped it was because everyone was out Hiking and camping!

I mostly recall walking a mile to get a decent cell phone signal ... Shoot. If it were two miles I might have added it to my list.

peri - You mean Enable phase. :-) The Do the book phase! Calico, I agree. It should be natural. PL sees a boy navigating during the 5 mile hike, getting better at it each mile. Gets back to the meeting house. Gets the boy to open his book. Signs off on the navigation. Another scout brings up his book saying he hiked those same five miles. PL may refuse to sign if the only skill shown was repeating "Are we almost there yet?" every quarter mile. Most PL's are more comfortable doing this than making up a hike for everyone just so Johnny could fulfill his requirement. All of the requirements should work out this way.

I'm in the same boat. we're in the "muddle through" stage between old and new officers. In this situation, I pick the bare minimum that I can contribute, ask my co-advisors to do the same, and that becomes our program skeleton.

Tok, good work. My thought (trying to make it practice, but not there yet): Put as much fun into your VOA meetings as fun as possible. Get the word out that you had a blast (and conducted some business). Send letters to advisors and crew presidents making it clear that that they are missing out. Has anyone read the Venturing Monthly Program Forum guide (http://scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34342.pdf)? Were they able to implement it? Did it work?

More likely lazy instead of pompous. The guy has one auto-signature and puts every catch-all position in it. (By the way, in my previous post, I forgot that right-left carets and anything between get interpreted as .html it's usually ... Yours in a spirit of fun and adventure, _First_Name_ Scouts and other youth it's often: Yours scoutingly, Mr. _Last_Name_)

If you can't spell it correctly, don't do it! Forget quizzing. Ask the boy, "Before we start this conference are you able to do or tell me about each requirement you have signed off so far?" If he hems and haws say, "What are you weak on?" Then say, "Why don't you practice it and come back?" Then, when he's ready, you can get to the nitty-gritty of the conference. (What he liked. What was challenging. His plan. Where to take the program next.) Really, isn't there already enough paperwork in this world?

Use the titles relevant to the message. Just enough to help recipients understand where they might know the writer. Parents in the troop only need to know I'm ASM and maybe crew advisor. Parents and youth in the crew only need to know I'm Advisor. And only then after we've had a bump in membership. Why? Because they may not remember my name -- even though they've just signed the youth over to my care. Folks around council might need to know I'm both of the above and Advisor to VP-Program VOA. My wood badge SM likes to know the positions I hold as well as my patrol, so I may add "Old Crow". If it's familiar correspondence (to familiar adults and crew officers), however, it's usually ... Yours in a spirit of fun and adventure, Scouts and other youth it's often: Yours scoutingly, Mr. Needless to say, I hate auto-signatures! I'd invariably pick the wrong one and wind up offending someone like TwoCub!

Assist the SM. Nuff said. (But of course, I'll expound!) If you're a morning person, get the coffee started. Night person, clean up the adult site. If he'd like you to look sharp, throw on the uniform, if he'd rather you chill, dress down a little. If he wants you to demonstrate a skill, do it. If he would like you to sit in on an SM conference, do it. However you want your boy to act towards his patrol leader, do the same toward your SM. Get to know the SPL. Accord him a large measure of respect. Go to committee meetings and roundtables. Keep an ear open to things that might suit your gifts and talents. Let the SM know where you think you can add to the life of the troop. Take as much training as you can, because when there's an emergency, the more "heads in the game," the better. As your responsibilities with the boys increase, you won't have as much time for training. Any certifications you may have (Climbing, CPR, Aquatics), keep them up to date! Yeah, and all the sit back and relax stuff applies as well -- if every ASM is doing their bit!

On behalf of the many youth who will benefit from your hard work, thanks for stepping in and coaching your Skipper. I've learned so much from my youth. I think I still have a lot to learn. The biggest challenge is that parents-off-the-back thing.

Oh. I thought you were going to be the COR! Two words: brace yourself. "Ethical controversies" are a hallmark of a highly functional crew. They are part of the requirements for earning awards. I'm just saying you already come with couple of topics that may or may not be of interest to the youth. It sounds like you have a good plan for working them out. Since it's taken me six years to find a youth willing to host one, I'll let other advisors comment on how they made this part of the program work. There's absolutely no reason why you can't be a ministry group that does a truckload of outdoor stuff. Or an outdoor group that encourages ministry. I'm more of the bent that we figure that out as we go along, and if we start that figuring with the youth from the outset, we set the tone that they are in charge of their destiny. Oh, by way of full disclosure (and maybe this supports OGE's point), if there's a hike to be had and a youth drops the ball, I'm in there taking up the slack. But that's because I love backpacking!

Obviously adults come with experience to evaluate if a program is needed and if Venturing meets that need or if something else is in order. But we started because a bunch of GS came up to us and said "Hey, we want to go to Seabase too!". My best recruiter was one young lady who rallied our friends with the line "come on, it'll be fun!". She refused to hold an office, but she drove the program for the first couple of years. She made flyers, collected fees for the treasurer, distributed paperwork for the VP-admin. My hardest job was keeping adults off her back! My point is an adult (every adult) in a crew should come prepared to pass their tasks to a youth in a group from day 1. Some things, like finance and tour plans, may always require an adult signature, but the handiwork should eventually routinely be the youth's. and by eventually, I mean no time like the present. In c42's case for example, he's coming in with a list of program opportunities in the Catholic church. Sounds like some of them may attract non-believers as well. He even has fodder for some ethical controversies (e.g., gender based roles in worship). So he may have a dozen options to offer the advisor- probably along the lines of the youth ministries bronze award and maybe the Trust award, other adults may have other skills (or primo camping spots - hint hint), so from the open house, his advisor presents the youth a menu of what the crew can do starting now, and then maybe a list of what they can do once officers are in place. Eventually, you'll have a youth-built list longer than you could imagine, and your offices wil be sorting between "must do" and "can do" activities.

We turn them in to the CO. Sometimes we make that part of the Scout Sunday service. Most times we put them in a frame and display them at the head of the coffee line.

As little as possible. Print up the first few flyers inviting kids to meetings. Do those interest surveys and capability inventories or otherwise brainstorm. Next meeting leave the room while they elect officers and maybe appoint chairmen for the first few activities. Coach the chairs of those activities on how to plan, get the word out, etc... Call your president weekly. Buy your officers lunch sometime. Evaluate. Yes, you have to adjust to the age of the youth, but not by much. My crew was helicoptered the first few outings. (By folks who in a troop would rant incessantly about the beauty of the patrol method!) They saw it as making sure everyone had a good time. I saw it as leadership opportunities squandered. I butted heads about how things were going to be. I finally started to regularly attend my council VOA and venturing committee and ask "Am I crazy?" To which they would reply "Yes, but you're also right." It's a wild ride, fraught with failure sometimes. (If a youth doesn't call the whitewater outfitter, we ain't raftin!) But it's fun. And now, I absolutely love when my youth plan the cooking! Never ate better!

That is the one thing national *does* offer: standards and examples that show how you (and your youth) can be distinctive. Simple case (one of the first I posted on this forum): several life scouts in or troop were officers in their crew. They put that as their POR on their Eagle application. Although I had cleared this with the district advancement chair years before, the registrar at council HQ thought they could only have troop POR's since their app went through the troop. Phone call to national settled that in our boys' favor. There are plenty of "my way or the highway" folks out there. And many of them will settle down when you have program materials that explicitly allow you to stay on you donkey path!

One other fallout on this is that we may not participate in the camp's T21 (or whatever they call it now) program. We have had good results with our older scouts teaching the younger ones the skills while at camp and us checking them once the older scout felt they were proficient. Another convert! Your boys are the best T2FC instructors your crossovers will ever meet.

C42, Sounds like you have a great vision. In broad strokes, you are offering a youth program with unique opportunities for religious service in the Catholic church. Venturing provides the structure which will allow your youth to set goals and make the most of those opportunities. The greatest challenge I find with a co-Ed crew is sufficient female adult leadership. Moms willing to hike into a wilderness area ( or spend a week in the Bahamas without a shower) are hard to find! But then challenging outdoor activities are important to my youth, and this is a significant shift from what women in our community used to ask for. If you have capable female and male leaders, you should definitely leverage those talents. Getting in touch with other crew advisors, and getting your advisors and committee to Venturing Leader Specifiic Training would be a good next step.

SPL is glue that sets the tone for your PLs. That can be good or bad. It gives the boys the opportunity to experience different styles of management. Ideally, they will watch a boy who is rather rough at management improve over his tenure. Sometimes it gives the boys the opportunity to learn how to succeed in spite of poor management! If all goes well, it also gives a scout confidence that what he learned as a PL can be generalized to a larger setting. If not, well, there is the next six months! In general I've seen more good then harm from it. (Of course having been one back in the day may be a bias.) Since our troop is down to two patrols, I haven't lobbied to get rid of the position.

We just hand out a below 0F certificate if we have a tenting weekend that falls in that range! We don't go looking for the coldest day of the year to go out in, but sometimes it happens. We are VERY meticulous about gear in those conditions. My preference: synthetic bag + Korean war wool blanket (handed down from my father-in-law). Boys are trained to check for frostbite, hypothermia, etc ... In general I've found the smaller the body, the harder it is to recover - even from early stages. (Glad I never had to deal with advanced cases.) So, no, not for cubs if you can help it! BD's right about them not being comfort temps. On the other hand, my son found a tick on him after we came back from walking the dog yesterday. You pick your poison, I guess.

Bring a boy as close to his Creator as you can without making it a permanent stay?

Dh, I could make the same statement about our VOA, except our crew has provided four officers in the past two cabinets. It would be a self-condemnation! VOAs should be fun things to be a part of. Ours isn't as fun as it could be. It's a problem we need to fix. When we do, I'll let you know. But I can tell you that one of our professionals has been very kind in pointing out what doesn't seem to be working. Regardless of what it will take to fix things, I'm fairly certain that walking away from the table isn't it.

You just described most church youth groups that I know. Except for the McAdventure's. There are lots of churchy youth gatherings that fill bill. (Creation Music Festival, for one, involves a few nights of camping.) There is less emphasis on citizenship and more on duty to God, but they promote mission tourism, which when you do the math can tap a parent's wallet just as readily as Jambo. (All that plane fare for a two week jaunt that could feed a village for a year!) I'm not entirely negative on the process, because I have seen it set the compass for quite a few young lives who as adults are doing great things. And yes, sometimes I wonder if my time in the BSA detracts from time helping support a youth group somewhere. EXCEPT my kids know what it takes to hit the ground running and make a camp (scout, church, or other) run smoothly so youth leaders can focus on ministry. (They've told me as much.)

I heard a survey of teens showed that sexting behaviors are extremely rare. Maybe we should think of it as an abnormal psychology? Get the kids help, not lock-up.

Yep, that last bit of information is a game changer. You do need to discuss with the boy what the boundaries of his invite are, that you will call him out if he crosses them, and if he is uncomfortable with that then he should tell you now and consider staying home. Remind him that you make an effort to keep a number of adults including yourself off his back, you now need him to pay it foward. Now be sure to listen because maybe you didn't get the whole story. Maybe Mr. PL did give him a call and wasn't entirely pleased with the plan and asked for some help at the last minute. Every now and then kids surprise us that way.

We stink at patrol method so take this with a grain of salt: Our SPL is always a member of one of our patrols. (He may or may not be a past PL.) If our patrols actually planned their own outing, he would be expected to only participate in the excursion his patrol planned. That said, our patrols are so doggone amicable that they keep inviting each other to their campsites, etc... Forget about what "might" have happened. The kid is on the roster now. Teach him a little "come-along-side" leadership. Ask him to cover the SPL patch, put himself under the PL's leadership, follow orders, and just be a generally agreeable chap. Any "sage advice" can be saved to PLC meeting. If his domineering spirit does become an issue (hopefully just a small one), you can point it out to him and discuss the challenges facing a "helicopter parent."