yknot

It would be nice to return to the days when there were at least some independent, ethical journalists and media outlets that attempted to remain objective. As far as young reporters, while traditional print media has mostly disappeared, there are other potential arenas for scouts to try. Township and county newsletters, news services, and websites; middle school and high school morning news shows; chamber of commerce, tourism, environmental and community lifestyle publications or even social media pages are all places to pitch an article or a post about a scout event or activity of note. It doesn't have to be traditional or mainstream print media.

4-H membership has grown significantly. Pre pandemic I think they were 4 million, dropped, but are now at 6 million. YMCA youth membership is up. Youth sports participation in traditionally tracked team or conventional individual sports is down but many non traditional sports have seen exponential growth in participation.

In 2019, about 2.1 million youth in BSA. In 2023, slightly less than a million. In 2019, about 1.7 million youth in GSUSA. In 2023 slightly more than a million. As of October, there are around a million girls in GSUSA and about 880,000 +/- scouts in BSA/SA.

Good news. Hopefully some kind of public private land preservation deal can be worked out. It looks like an incredible piece of property still open space in a developing area where future parkland will be greatly needed.

The way it was explained to me was that the impacts of the bankruptcy case and lawsuits will continue to affect the liability insurance market for a number of years if not decades. As individual insurers or insurer groups encounter these rolling effects, we probably shouldn't be surprised if their recommendations change and/or rates increase.

The 22,000 are not all ineligible volunteers. It is a disciplinary database that includes a range of incidents, from the most egregious abuse to those who have been directed to complete additional training before returning to their role as either a coach, athlete, or official. Currently SafeSports is directly responsible for at least 11 million youth but throws a much wider net in that is also encompasses collegiate age athletes and beyond.

There are closer to 8,000 released files. That is not the total file count because an unknown number were removed in the 1990s in a bulk purge. Approximately 60 million youth are registered to play sports each year in the United States compared to the low numbers involved in scouting. Anecdotally, multiple victims who filed abuse claims have noted that their abusers are not listed in the released files despite having been reported to organized scouting.

I think that was for actually making up fake memberships although it predates my time. This is counting charters and memberships past the end of the year through a three month grace period that extends into March. They include them in the membership tally they publicize on or around Jan. 1. They didn't publicize a membership total in January of this year, 2024, though so even with that scheme, as the 11/23 numbers showed, it must have been a decline. Under the new registration scheme, SA will now allow themselves to count expired memberships as pending for six months while they continue to send renewal notices.

Numbers from 12/23 were inflated, as they are end of year in every report that the BSA issues in early January. That's because the BSA doesn't reconcile its membership until March. The most accurate membership number is generally April to April. Somewhere on this Forum there was a post from I think Malveaux @malraux who had an accurate count from last year that was more along the lines of 875,000.

The actual membership number July of 2023 was somewhere around 875,000, so the drop isn't that dramatic. BSA/SA has always played a shell game with its membership numbers. The ones it generally announces on January 1 or thereabouts have always been inflated. It's better to compare mid year numbers year to year. There has been a substantial drop but it's in the few tens of thousands combined.

Fall hawk watches along any of the nation's flyways are reliably good for daytime spotting and for honing ID skills. On moonlit nights, point bins up at the moon to see if songbirds are on the move. On big flight nights when conditions cooperate, it's awe inspiring to see streams of them flying by. This is a really fun tool to look at what is flying over your neck of the woods each night. You just enter in your state or county: https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/migration-dashboard/

That is limiting if it is only for 14 and up. The system I'm most familiar with is used from middle school ages on up.

I don't specifically know RealReponse but I know someone who developed a system like it and has been utilized in academic settings. If it's similar certain responses will trigger automatic third party involvement, usually direct to law enforcement and an assigned individual in the organization. RealResponse doesn't see it but someone in law enforcement does. It can be customized to some degree but the companies that offer these resources do not want people posting online that they reported an incident using something like RealResponse and nothing happened.

I don't think it will change adult reporting in states where mandated but ideally it should make things better for youth. It sounds like they will have a way to report incidents anonymously and directly to a third party. Right now the only place the kids have to report anonymously or outside their units is in social media, and that's not good or really helpful, especially in a crisis situation. Real Response is a reputable concern that serves some high profile organizations so it's hard to imagine they would allow BSA/SA to subvert investigations or wouldn't ensure follow up, resolution, and reporting.

Thanks for tag. It's a 30 year old program conducted from Maine to Alabama and administration is dependent on annual surveillance and identification of localized hot spots. Hopefully it continues to help keep rabies incidence in wildlife populations largely at bay. Scouts and scouters in the Eastern US should be familiar with what these oral bait sachets look like.