Eagle1993

This is in order of likelihood a pigtail mafia member will leave a thin mint bomb in your mailbox. 1 - start with sisters of existing members 2 - have them reach out to their friends to recruit them to join 3 - standard Join Scouts Night stuff (flyers, yard signs, emails). Have something fun to do for the kids and ensure some girls that plan to join attend 4 - reach out to existing GSUSA scouts 5 - recruit existing GSUSA Troop leaders 6 - boom... your mailbox just exploded Overall, I don’t see much of a difference from recruiting boys other than making sure parents and girls see that a group of girls are joining. Once they see that, they’ll consider it more for themselves. Oh, and I don’t really recommend intentionally using 4 or 5 above... though we did end up with both (unintentionally). My hands shake a bit every time I start my car.

Paper applications are now being accepted. Most of the girls were able to register online but the. BSA payment system seems flaky after a couple of the parents spent hours using various browsers. One parent said they checked their CC bill and found the BSA had charged them 8 x $33 ($264) (once for each attempt to register). She said she is sure the BSA will refund the money ...🙄 There is an article online with our major paper and I’m working with them so they spell our Pack number correctly. The council is having the other Pack lead the media effort and I’m perfectly content. I think most members in our Pack fall into the category that adding girls is fine... but I don’t think they are looking to be the center of media attention or lead any crusade. One challenge we are now facing. We have three girls who are twin sisters of existing Pack members (all Tigers). Our Tiger den is 26 Scouts. A couple of them have been going to Pack and den meetings but are not members of the Pack. They would like to join but the parents are too busy for more den meetings (for the girls den). So we have started discussions of adding a second girl den, this one dedicated to Tiger girls that would meet same time and place as the boys. My thought is that we can actually provide more separation between the boys and girls as I’ll have another den leader attend and work with them separately. The adult partner will be there for both their kids. Nothing official yet, but we are discussing it.

Given their take on cookie sales that is probably about $12.

I agree with the above. I may have read the other comment incorrectly but I did not see volunteers state that they wanted the separate but equal program. At all of my District and “family scouting” meetings there were questions on where the volunteers would come from given the proposal. There were questions from COs in how this would logistically work. The opinions were either fully implement coed or stay away. I didn’t see much (or any) support of separate Troops. It appears that national is now realizing this.

This was exactly the opposite of what I have heard at our meetings. Most have voiced support of fully coed and rejected this proposal as there were not enough volunteers to implement.

A good point regarding Cub Scouts in that it could establish the mindset in Boy Scouts. I’m not sure what you mean by agenda driven. I find most of the comments in all of these forums agenda driven. Some have agendas to keep BSA boy led. Others have agendas to change OA. I guess what agenda are you alluding to. Only 11.2% of corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies are women (I assume that means 88.7% are men and 0.1% are other). Only 4.2% have female CEOs. Clearly there is a fall off of women leaders somewhere...

I think leadership of coed Packs and BSA4G Troop who will run like coed will have to watch for this and it may be a good reason to ensure there remains some segregation within a coed program. I don’t see much concern at Cub scouts as it is parent run and there are really no leadership roles. At Boy Scout level, for those Troops that combine (they’ll exist) I certainly hope they keep the Patrols separate to allow both boy and girl PLs and even keep separate SPLs. While girls dominating may contine into high school, I’m actually not seeing women leaders take over my workplace (in the USA). I still see male leaders dominate the ranks after you get beyond the first level. This is such a concern in our corporation that I’m being pulled into new training titled Men Advocating for Real Change. Essentially watching for bias within the organization that could be preventing a diversified leadership. I could see BSA as a great method to help build both male (and female) leaders of the future.

@Pselb Before this thread goes down a path of pro/con girls I would recommend (to all) that those posts go in Issues and Politics. There has been pages of debate and I definitely have no issues seeing that debate continue and I believe you have some valid points and concerns. I posted this in programs as my goal with this tread is to talk of the actual program as we add girls and issues/challenges/ideas as BSA already made the call and Packs that decide to add girls should have the ability to share experiences and ideas.

Well, our 83 year old Pack just had our first girl den meeting... and I believe the Earth is still rotating. No media present but we did have some pictures taken of the girls. Most were in uniform and no skorts. Overall it was a lot calmer than a boy den meeting. We have 3 den leaders working the 3 separate age groups present. All of us we experienced in the Pack and we remarked that we need to prepare more as the girls got through the material more quickly than we planned. That could be due to smaller groups, but they were also a bit more focused. Several of the girls were talking about getting friends to join, so we will see if this grows before the fall. The skit I planned to work with them on was a failure (it dealt with fake spitting into buckets but the young ones didn’t quite pull off the fake part and and kept spitting on me). There may me some media (all optional) later in the week as we are one of a few Packs in the area doing the early adopter program. I’m greatful that our council let us run a standard den meeting without pushing for media access and the TV cameras I’ve seen in other markets. They were very hands off and simply thanked us for taking this on.

I’ve seen several kids hit trees (not scouting) while sledding... luckily no ER visits. If you are not careful you can easily misjudge your speed (and thus length of run at bottom) or your ability to control yourself going straight. My heart goes out to this family and it will make me think twice when I send my kids out sledding without helmets (we’ve never used them for sledding or seen them used).

This looks good to me. We also have energetic Scouts and a few tips that helped us: Parents discouraged from attending den meetings after Tiger. After Tiger they are just in the way and can distract the scouts. Having keep busy activities available for the time before Pack meeting starts. In some cases bins of legos, others Holiday card making, etc. Something to keep them occupied. Den Meeting whistle. Some may frown but Iit works. I had a den leader forget his whistle one day and it looked as if he had PTSD after the meeting.

A council had hooters help sponsor a camp??? My company won’t even reimburse Hooters expenses on corporate cards (they lump them in with the “gentlemen’s” club list). I love that sassy ass response from the DE. I’m surprised he didn’t reference the wings.

Wow. What next? Bars, smoke shops, strip clubs?

Let’s talk about some of the metoo “victims” #1st tweet was on Harvey Weinstein by Ashley Judd (Oct 5) Roy Price was taken out Oct 11... Larry Nassar Oct 18... Kevin Spacy Oct 29... Roy Moore Nov 9.... Louis C.K. Nov 10... Matt Lauer Nov 29... Garrison Keillor Nov 30... at first I thought perhaps this one was a reach, until MPR came out with a bit more info... Russell Simmons Nov 30... Al Franken Dec 7 Mario Batali Dec 11 Gary Goddard Dec 20.. Read about these. Which men should be put back in their position? What I see is man after man in positions of power sexually abuse, assault and harrass men and women for years and decades with no fall out. I’m sure there are some (I think the figure published is 2% but it’s probably higher) that have false acquisition. The beginning of this thread was that metoo was bad for women and men. I call BS. Status quo is bad for good people. Taking a stand against individuals who abuse their power is always a good thing. As scout leaders it should make us relook at and ensure we are enforcing YPT. Larry Nassar was able to sexually abuse countless girls including Olympic athletes for years. Girls parents believed the abuser instead of their own daughters. No 1 on 1 contact must be strictly enforced. In my home time in the 1980s a child accused a Catholic priest of rape. A few days later it came out that he lied. I remember my parents saying what a sick boy that kid was for lying. Only he wasn’t... Years later that priest was found with another boy. I don’t think now is the time for scout leaders to send messages that are being sent in this thread. Many of the posts seem to be much more about judging the accusers than encouraging openness and getting to the truth.

I guess my question to you is what do you want to see? I want women to feel unpowered and report instances of sexual harassment and assault. Those reports should be fully investigated and guilty individuals should lose their jobs and freedom, if appropriate. Too many times women (and men) have been silent as we have seen over the last 3-4 months.

@Pselb I guess I’m more worried about the next Jerry Sandusky or Larry Nassar. Both were accused and their accusers were ignored for years.

What dynamic? I understand the concern of false accusations but I haven’t see waves of men fired unjustifiedly. I have seen bad men finally loosing their jobs and freedom after years of ignoring their previous accusers.

I haven’t seen any changes at my workplace; however, we have had a rigorous sexual harassment program along with a great omsbud system. Over the last 20 years, I know of three people accused. Two were fired, and rightly so. One was exonerated with no impact to his career. We still have one on one meetings with females, no issues. It’s been really difficult, but I’ve managed to keep my pants on for all of my meetings with my female coworkers. The general discussions at our workplace is the shock in how out of control some workplaces must have been to allow this behavior to continue as long as it did.

Not clear. It was just the fact that I saw no engagement from council on several matters other than FOS (and other fundraisers).

I just came back from one of the most depressing District meetings I had been to in years. There was a proposal to create a council wide camporee for Cubs through Boy Scouts, with a goal of 1,000 Scouts . The council voted it down as it was not in their best interest. Now the Districts are left hoping they can pull something together. Another topic came up regarding councilwide service project... no support from council. FOS ... well, that is the focus for them this year. From my limited experience, the order should be Program - Recruiting - Fundraising. If you put on great council events, it will improve your ability to recruit and then you have more people and excitement to donate. Putting all your focus on squeezing that last bit of juice from your current membership is not a great long term play.

I always liked Churchill’s quote “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” OR Tyson...”Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.”

To be fair, the complexity is jumping up on YPT and overnight requirements. I think a BSA sponsored YPT playbook armband should be coming out soon.

This was much more formal than our arrangement however the rules are consistent. I have heard of some Packs taking in paper applications and others accepting 5th grade girls. I’m sure some have already combined dens.

The separate sleeping arrangements was an area of widespread agreement ... but I expect some Packs to screw that up.