whitepine

These are all great ideas! I think that getting the guys to invite others can work, and what I'm really looking for is getting some younger kids to join, whether through Cubs or friends. Thanks for the help!

I am in a very small troop. There are 7 members, 6 of which are 15 or older. I am an Eagle, there are 4 Life Scouts, 1 First Class Scout, and 1 new 11 year old Scout who is a Life's younger brother. The deal is that we are extremely top heavy with no feeder pack and there are few children in the struggling church we are at. We are outside a medium sized city there are plenty of other troops just minutes away. The troop will inevitably fold in the next two years as some guys age out. With all of this said, I really want to see the troop survive. We use the patrol system as much as possible, go on great trips, are involved in the OA, and have active kids. Does anyone here have an idea of what we can do to gain members? I expect getting a handful of new members can't be that hard, but we need to start now and need ideas.

I don't know how familiar some of you are with the Royal Ambassadors, or RAs. Most of the boys in my church, including me, were involved in it. It was a boy's Southern Baptist missions program and had some Scouting influences. I was even a member of the RA's and Cub Scouts at the same time, though the RA group was viewed as more of a church activity.

I don't know yet if my any in my troop were negatively affected, but the sad events of that day certainly made an impact on them. We should all be thinking of the scout's family and friends who are going to have to live without their loved one.

My troop went camping at Stone Mountain this past weekend. I was at a Lodge event and didn't go. The state park is in my council and is about roughly 1 houraway from where we live. The troop he was with is from a town much further away and was camping there that weekend as well. For those not familiar with the mountain, it is basically eroded away to expose a huge rock bald. Although past deaths and injuries have led to some better marked trais, warning signs, and railing; there are areas where the gradual slope can intice people to go too far out on the rock. As fate would have it, both my troop and his were on the summit at the same time. It appears that both groups were off the marked trail, exploring the rock face. The Scout who died walked past my troop and said something along the lines of "I'm going to see how far I can go". My friends have guessed that he walked too far downhill on the open face, lost balance, and tumbled down a ways before falling off a pronounced cliff. Well, my friends were the last ones to see him alive on the summit. That's if you don't count the rock climbers who saw him in freefall. His unfortunate death really affected my friends. We have decided as a troop to never overstep similar park boundaries again.

It's really sad to hear about another camp closing for any reason. That's why my council's camp isn't directly owned by the council, it's really just being run by it. A charitable trust in a nearby city owns it, and we keep acquiring nearby land so that we can maintain a wilderness setting.

Many of the senior staff members at my local camp have taken NCS courses and they appear to be very detailed. I know a guy who took a weeklong Leave No Trace course in June and he said that it was a very well put together curriculum to learn from. They basically lived and breathed the principles all week long. For people that don't know much about it, this is the real deal. I was under the impression that it was a fairly common program among adults. (I'm a youth member so I'm not so cued in to "official" training.)

If homosexuals and/or female youth were allowed in the BSA, I predict that the official BSA would shrink and that other scouting groups would be formed or grow. I also think that entire councils would secede.

I have a friend working on her Gold Award project who has never slept in a tent on a GS camping trip. Her troop stick to arts and crafts and service projects.(This message has been edited by whitepine)

I will concede that my lodge doesn't do everything accurately when it comes to ceremonies. For instance, the pipe totem and dance were invented by us because of the importance of tobacco in our area. We also tend to do the same thing every time we have a ceremony due to tradition. Part of that is fear of change. I am not involved in Indian Affairs or Ceremonies, but I am friends with many people that are and it would be interesting to see a more historically accurate induction ceremony.

Wow BSA24, I am disappointed. You chose Wahissa Lodge #118 to single out and accuse of ignorance with your YouTube link. Wahissa Lodge, MY lodge, has a GREAT Indian Affairs program. Our dancers regularly go to powwows and dances across the state and nation to learn more about their styles of dance. You seem to forget that they spend lots of time, money, and research into what they do.Also, our drum team learns true Native American songs to use for tap out ceremonies and competitions. To top it all off, many people think they are good at what they do because our competition teams consistently do well and I'd say about 10,000 people attend our Wednesday night OA tapout ceremonies each summer. With all of this said, I will concede on one point. Due to the lack of Native American population in our area, we don't have a centralized cultural focus on any one tribe or people group. The local Saura Indians were driven out hundreds of years ago and the Cherokee and Lumbee live pretty far from us so we may mix things a bit. However, everything that we do is done out of respect for the people that lived on this continent before a bunch of pale people came over in ships.

My old troop (note word old), had a horrible way of electing people for leadership positions. Only a few offices had real competition, and oftentimes SPLs and other leaders were given positions because they needed to complete rank requirements. One memorable SPL hated Scouting, went to summer camp only once, and didn't tell people he was a Scout. His parents recently pushed him through Eagle, go figure. The troop is/was almost wholly composed of kids forced to go to meetings by their parents and patrols were barely used at all. I knew my time there was up when I was denied the chance to run for OA rep. because I was an Eagle Scout and needed to let others do the job. Only 3 in the troop had ever gone to a lodge event since our Ordeals... So... it is critical that you stress the importance of positions like SPL, and encourage capable, enthusiastic kids to run for the office.

If you were King of the BSA and did all of those things, Scouting would be even better than it is now!

JoeBob- I'm on my school's shooting team and agree that switching between shooting methods is difficult. However, at most camps you can rest your rifle on a sandbag AND use peep sights, which makes qualifying relatively easy.

I sure never got a prize for Webelos I! That's similar to giving participation trophies to every player in a sports little league. However, a flashlight or compass would work if you find a gift to be necessary.