Crew 1434

Hello, First some housekeeping; Venturing and Venture are not the same and refer to different programs. Venturing is the term used for BSA newest program. The members of a Venturing Crew are called Venturer. They may be male or female beginning at age 14 and completed the 8th grade up to the day they turn 21. Boys who complete 1st class in a traditional Troop program may elect to pursue Eagle within the Venturing program. The boy does not need to be 1st class before he joins a crew in order to exercise this option as long as he is still registered in a troop and completes the rank in the traditional program. Just like adults, youth can have multiple registrations; in fact the youth can be members of multiple crews. The only cost involved with this is to the unit that the youth is primary registered in, all other units should just write MULTIPLED FROM UNIT (and whatever the number of the primary unit is) and turn in the application to the council. The $1.00 fee is only when a youth has an active membership and wishes to transfer from one unit to another. Primary membership can be changed when the unit recharters as long as the unit pays the registration fee ($8.00 with insurance). Venture on the other hand is just a special patrol within a Troop. Scouts in a Venture Patrols cannot do all the things a Venturer can do in the Venturing program. Girls can come to Venture activities as guests but can not join because it is part of a Boy Scout Troop. I dont know why national choose two names so close to each other but the terms are not interchangeable. That being said, I work with several active crews, most of them meet twice a month and hold one weekend activity every other month or so (I also have one that meets every other week which on occasion ends up with 3 meeting in one month). I have also found that Crews tend to do things with other crews to add to the social facet. The way my primary crew is set up is that it is a sister unit to the troop. Any boy who wishes to join the crew is just multiplied into the crew until the next recharter at which point the boy is primared in the crew and multiplied in the troop. The crews by-laws state that you may not be President and SPL at the same time in order to prevent conflict of interest. I do have members from other troops in the crew too. The meetings are dates are set so not to conflict with the troop program. We meet the 1st Thursday of the month and one floating day which the kids pick out the month before. The crew does do a couple of thing with the troop as well. Retention in both programs is great. I have 10 members that are in college and come back on breaks and during the summer and pick right back into the program. The older boys in the troop tend to come more regularly because they know they have the opportunity to do some thing with out the 11 year olds. I also have a couple members in the crew that were in the troop as 11 or 12 year olds and dropped for whatever reasons but have come back to join the crew now that they were in high school. The kids like to be social and Venturing is the ticket for stopping the 2 Ps (Perfume & Petroleum) from pulling a boy out of the troop. The one thing that I would say about this age group is they care less about recognition, they just want to have fun with a group of friends.