Eagle1993

Our Pack had 12 den leaders and only 3 are female. That said, those three are some of our best leaders. One of our female den leaders spent a semester in NOLS and spent a semester camping out in Denver area. She is was teaching several dads techniques to stay warm and dry clothing overnight before Klondike. She somehow manages our den of 26 Tigers. She will be our future Cubmaster. Not sure how common our male/female ratio is in our district.... I agree that keeping den leaders energized is very difficult and a leader that may work out well for Tigers is not the same leader that works for Webelos. I think re-evaluating den leader decisions each year may be a good practice. @Eagledad what was the program changes that you made that helped retention? Overall ours isn’t bad but I’m always interested in hearing ideas that could improve the experience of leaders and scouts.

Yep. I saw their memorial in Washington DC. Oh wait... Point is that attempting to say we need to arm all Americans with AR-15s in order to fight the government is ridiculous. There are a few groups that tried arm conflict with the US government recently (WACO, Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11, Bundys come to mind). Those efforts failed and will continue to fail. No amount of AR-15 will allow citizens to fight the government... they will always have more firepower. If your not happy with the government you vote. If you want to keep high power rifles with large magazines legal, that is fine, just don’t use some sort of lame excuse that you need them to fight tyranny. Several of the arguments in this thread are much more valid.

Hmmm... we had the 2nd amendment but yet both of your examples still occurred. I’d point to MLK or Ghandhi as examples of those who gained rights and freedom through non violence without the need to arm mentally ill teenagers with AR-15s.

Actually, the tool to fight tyranny is called a ballot. You’ll have much more success than going after Pence or Trump (or any other so called Tyrant) with an AR-15. I would not recommend that approach.

We had parents of one of our scouts present at the Las Vegas shooting. The father is a hunter and immediately recognized the sound of bullets going thru the air, so he and his wife ran immediately out of the area being targeted. The mother comforted one of the victims who was shot through the neck. It was incredibly traumatic event for both involved. I remember as a youth when we only did Tornado and fire drills... now these kids perform lockdown drills. It really puts the problems in your life in perspective.

It is a lot of work...and honestly they are very young. Multiple times I’ve felt something on my leg and it was a Lion giving me a hug. Kinda sad but I’m not comfortable with that at all, I get self conscious that the parents will think I’m a creep. So I gently pull the young one away and get him back on task only to have the other leg attacked by another. If your parents already think of Cub Scouts at Tiger age then I wouldn’t recommend it. For us, I feel that it helps to get the kids and parents together at a young age in prep for real Cub Scouts. I think of it as more of an early sustained Join Scouts Night than a real Cub Scout rank.

I’m good with the changes they made. I definitely recommend the minimal Pack activity so as to not burn them out over 5.5 years. We also limit Tiger activities in some cases as well. I agree with those that burn out can be a concern, so adding additional activities as Scouts age is critical. This takes a lot of work but with a larger pack is manageable. Our first year we had 18 Lions. 15 made it to Tiger (we added 9 additional Tigers who were not Lions). This year we have 12 Lions (excluding girls). Typically we would only see 8-10 Tigers join each year. I think we lost a lot of potential scouts in the early years as parents start setting up their sons activities at a young age. Dasies start at the same age as Lions and prior to Lions I had to turn away parents who were confused when Cub Scouts started. Several of those parents never returned.

You’ll make hundreds of these VERY happy with this strategy.

Not sure if this helps, but in my.scouting.org Organization Manager there is a new Family Scouting section. There are start and end dates and if you are a Boy only, Girl only or Boy and Girl unit. Part of me thinks that BSA is simply using the term Family Scouting instead of coed. If you are not an early adopter Pack it simply states your unit is not participating in family scouting. Go to the BSA website. Cub Scouts membership states “youth” while Venturing, Sea Scouts and Exploring is listed as “coed”. They are trying to emphasize that Cub Scouts (and BS4G) are not coed.. they are for the entire family (both boys and girls). It is a messy and confusing message and brings with it to concerns referenced above.

These seems like speculation on speculation but heck, I’m game. Once BSA admitted girls and stated that the program will work with them expect a loss at the Supreme Court if any attempt starts to kick them out. I think you would see the significant loss of FOS contributions and BSA bankruptcy. This isn’t rewriting a handbook and leadership retirement. These are individuals our organization invited to join and kicking them out at a later date would be likened to (and have the same result as) kicking out Jewish or black members. Like it or not, this change is permanent.

Agreed. The most aggressive Troops in my area plan to go full coed (paper Troops if necessary), #3 definitely true. Based on a message on Facebook group I am a member of, the buzzfeed article and quotes from my local council spokeswoman #5 is already in process. Also, I’ve seen several coed countries remove the local option after an initial launch and require all units to go coed (other than for religious reasons) so #4 is likely in a few years. I think a great topic is #6. What does the BSA need to do to meet the needs of today’s youth while making it fun and cool to join? Some Troops and Packs do this well but Nationally it is not happening. Could the UK loan us Bear Grylls for a while?

What data are you using for UK scouting? From what I can see, they have a higher percentage of youth in Scouting than USA and they are growing vs the continuous BSA decline. I’m even including the Learning for Life I’m the BSA numbers which I don’t believe is really Scouting. I also expect BSA will see a big drop as older LDS scouts have a new program (impacting Varsity and Venturing numbers).

@Mattosaurus First, your Eagle Project sounds great. My wife and I have participated in similar food packs and the experience was rewarding and fun for the volunteers in addition to providing desperately needed nourishment. I completely agree with Backpack. Work to rectify the documentation as quickly as possible. Admit you missed this requirement and already started collecting the funds. I don’t believe you would run into an issue unless there are significant concerns regarding your fundraising method. Talking with my father who runs EBORs there are frequent paperwork issues. They would much rather have scouts own and rectify the issue. Attempting to fudge data or having mom or dad run cover (make up fake excuses) is not a good method to address the gap. Keep up the good work and good luck!

Agreed, but I am interested as to why the Canada Scout membership dropped. I don’t think it can simply be explained as coed as UK numbers appear fine. BSA is going coed, that decision has been made. Are there mistakes Canada made that we can avoid and best practices that other coed scout organizations made that we should follow?

I believe the UK scout org is coed. They have about 457,000 Scouts and a population of 5 - 19 year olds of 11.18M. So they have 4.4% of their Scout age population in Scouts. USA has 63.1M in age range of 5-19 so roughly 4.1% of their Scout age population is in Scouts. Note I’m not counting UK girl guides or US Girl Scouts in these numbers (or any other scout organization).

If this is handled similar to how our council is handling Cub Scout camps (both day and overnight) there is no separate weeks for boys vs girls. The council simply states that if you meet the age requirements and are registered them you can attend. They’ll handle the added requirements due to multiple genders.

This was brought up during our district meetings and the answers we were given included posting shower/changing room times (men vs women) and using port-o-johns until facilities are updated. I tend to agree many camps are not ready, and councils will need answers as early as this summer for the girl cub scouts camps.

Given that many youth organization numbers are down, I’d recommed looking at society. - Women working outside the home/dual income families - Internet and gaming improvements - Year round sports organizations - Lack of buy in that an outdoor organization has relevance in today’s society

YPT requires a trained adult leader to monitor and guide any youth leaders. First it isn’t clear the Boy was a youth leader and second it seems clear that he was not monitored by and adult leader. I’d also state that if parents are raising concens the den leader should be addressing them.

“What happens when the girls transition to Boy Scout Troops when they get to be about 11 years old is still being worked out”, Clark said. “The options appear to be all-girl Scout Troops or all-girl patrols within a Boy Scout Troop”, she said. This quote came from a spokeswoman from my council during a newspaper interview. It seems like that all Girl patrol in an existing Troop is definitely being considered.

There should be two adult trained leaders present at all Cub Scout activities. This den leader is blatantly disregarding the scouts’ safety. You should discuss this with the Cubmaster if the den leader is not responding. If interested, I’d recommend you take the BSA youth protection training and you will quickly see that the den leader is violating it.

@qwazse What will really happen if BSA waits until January is that existing Troops will have their existing trained SM/ASM/CC/etc. create a paper “girl” Troop and simply combine forces with their existing Boy Scout Troop. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but I don’t believe there are a lot of people waiting and ready to quickly create truly independent new Troops in the matter of weeks. As a CC of an existing Pack it was a lot of extra work to add girls mid stream. Simply dealing with the crappy BSA IT system, tracking down dues, finding and training new den leaders, reserving meeting locations, etc. while maintaining my existing Pack obligations wasn’t easy. Many BSA volunteers are already heavily loaded and creating a new Troop is a lot more work than simply adding a den. If BSA really wants hundreds of new Troops created in time for spring crossover then I do think it makes sense that they announce and allow Troops to start forming this fall (even if they don’t allow scouts to join immediately). This will allow the IT glitches, recruiting and training of volunteers, going to your local banks to setup new accounts, setting up meeting locations to occur in time for crossover. If they go down the path @Eagle94-A1 mentioned then it is similar to adding a den (probably even easier) and they could get that up and running quickly in January.

Let me make it simple for you... The new program being proposed for girls is not additional Patrols in an existing Troop, but new Girls only Troops. If nationals really wants that to roll out correctly (and not be paper Troops) they will need to allow plenty of time for the the organizational structure to get in place. Adding a den is fairly easy in an existing Pack. Having volunteers generate brand new Troops will take a lot more work and time. If they don’t want girls waiting around until mid 2019 for crossover then nationals will have to launch the program this fall. If nationals is claiming they can launch the program in January next year I expect many girls will be waiting a long time for Troops to form. On the other hand, if they don’t care about paper Troops forming then Jan would probably work.

Not only that but it takes time to generate a new unit. It took me 2-3 weeks of IT hoops and leader training just to add a den in an existing pack. If they want new Troops for girls ready by April 2019 they need to start soft launching this year. That will allow COs to generate the new Troops. Leaders for these troops to be put in place. Bank accounts created. Treasures, CC, SM, ASM all trained. Then what about new equipment? Reservations for meeting locations. There are a ton of activities for a new Troop and I’d expect they’ll need 3-6 months lead time so when the girls join the logistical items are complete. Given that, they should start this effort this fall.

We discussed this with our CO who passed a formal resolution during the board meeting stating they would support either direction that our Pack committee would choose. Our COR and IH supported adding girls. I definitely agree with the comments that the CO should be informed and decide which direction the Pack should take.