DE Training

[jhankins]

Flying woulda been cool! From council office to my farthest unit it was 240 miles. From my door to most of my 7am breakfast meetings it was 45 miles one way...

[moosetracker]

Your area would need some wide open planes, otherwise I can see a helocopter, but a Cessna would need a place to land, and/or someone to pick you up at whatever field you could find to land at.

 

If you are a retired pilot makes sense, you need to log a certain amount of flight time to keep you license up to date.

 

PS. The cactus image, paints a wonderful image of what your job is like.. What about all us lovely volunteers, don't we make the whole job a bed of roses.. No.. I get equated to being a cactus thorn!!! I get the picture.

[Eagle92]

Moose,

Actually the volunteers are those beautiful cactus flowers, for the most part The needles come form the long hours, little pay and upper management.

[jhankins]

Well, there are a few volunteers here and there that liked to be cactii

 

Most of my volunteers I would have called snapdragons, pretty and feisty!

[Eagle92]

In all seriousness, my volunteers were wonderful, and helped me to not only provide a good program, but also did what they could to help me achieve my professional goals. My committee knew what I was going through, knew the problems I was facing, knew how I was attempting to fix them. They were behind me 100% And when I returned to the area 4 years later I was welcomed back with open arms.

[jhankins]

Treat your volunteers well, and they'll take care of you. Bending over backwards to make their lives a little easier makes a difference.

[Eagle2000]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Does the BSA pay any mileage to professionals?

[Eagle92]

varies from council to council, as well as SE to SE. I had a company car. My DE was using his car, but now has a company van. Then again he is a program person, so the van is usually filled with camping supplies. Another DE we had received mileage reimbursement. BUT depending where you are located, you can put on tons of miles. One friend of mine's district was less that 25 square miles. Another had 5 large counties in rural NC

 

 

 

[jhankins]

My council did company cars with gas cards until the whole money fiasco went down. I received a car allowance and mileage after that. Then it has turned into just mileage.

 

It's good to tour the potential district they're looking at for you, see the distance between units, and judge the mileage rate accordingly. I was putting 3,000 miles a month on my car, sometimes more because the size of my district and the location of the council office to my units.

[BadenP]

Well Eagle 92 and jhankins

After reading your posts it became obvious to me I was DE years before you guys, the good old NEI training days. Numbers, Money, Manipulation were the key words then, but it sounds like it may be a little better these days. Unfortunately it still sounds like the keywords I mentioned are still the focus today, just a little more sugar coated. The most troubling thing I read is that the corruption within higher level professional scouting is worse than ever and it is impacting our organization as a whole, loss of numbers,councils, camps, programs, poorer training, etc.

 

I always likened being a DE to being like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills and trying to reach that unreachable star, still I do really miss parts of the job.