Educating Scouters and Non-Scouters about Venturing

[BSAChaplain]

I am the Advisor of a Crew shich is independent of a Troop. Some of our members are Boy Scouts and some are Girl Scouts, but most are not. Like all Venturers we use High Adventure as one of our "Venturing's emphasis on high adventure helps provide team-building opportunities, new meaningful experiences, practical leadership application, and lifelong memories to young adults." But that does not mean climbing tall mountains or hiking across the Sahara, which seems to be the misconception so many in Scouting seem to think it is.

 

I believe that this keeps Venturing from growing in so many other affinity groups.

 

Do you have similar experiences in your District/Council? What, if anything, are you doing to change peoples understanding?

 

[John-in-KC]

I point them to one of our Crews... centered around a HS theater program. Their superadventure is a trip to Broadway, to include backstage visits.

 

I could point them to another Crew, centered around one of our camp staffs. It meets and does stuff year round, but its peak activity is during the season.

[emb021]

Building on what John-in-KC says, the first step is being knowledgable about what Venturing is and isn't. It does help Venturing when its self proclaimed advocates themselves don't fully understand the program. (not speaking about you, but have met others out there).

 

The second, as just as important, is being aware of the WIDE range of Venturing Crews out there. Too often all people think of Venturing is Outdoors/High adventure crews. You need to be aware of examples of arts/hobbies, sports, religious life crews, and explain these to people. Even better, if such exist in your council.

 

[Lisabob]

There are an awful lot of misconceptions about what venturing is all about, that's for sure. One thing we've kicked around a bit is to start with established scout leaders (troops in particular) and help them understand what the program is. Because they're often the largest source of entrenched opposition and/or misinformation about venturing. So perhaps a light education segment at a Round Table is a starting point for these folks.

 

As for non-scout folks (youth and adults alike), most probably have no conception at all, right or wrong, about what venturing is about. It has not been given a high profile in terms of BSA advertising, at least not as far as I can tell! So the question here isn't how to change misconceptions, but rather, how to attract a curious audience to begin with. Once you have that audience you can be sure to provide them with examples of the wide range of activities venturing crews might be involved in, so that they leave with the knowledge that outdoor high adventure is not the only thing available.

 

And as a couple of additional non-outdoor-adventure examples: we have 2 crews-in-the-making in our area, one of which may be oriented to shooting sports and the other of which is interested in fire fighting (really more of an explorer post format, but they want to be a crew and not a post). There is also a regular poster on this board who is involved with a crew that does Civil War re-enactment.

 

 

[trailfinder52@yahoo.com]

Venturing is a varied program,but most traditional scouts and scouters feel that it is only a high adventure program and that is wrong the whole program has 5 clusters with many specialties in those 5 clusters. Venturers can climb mountains true, but they can play jazz, paint pictures, sail boats, canoe lakes, have a bike hike in the country or in a city, have a crew in a high school marching band, cheerleaders, and even the neighborhood high school sports team can be a Venture crew. Venturing at best in diversity, and on the move.