Lisabob 13 Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 Hi folks, I could use your input on this one. We have a pack in our town that has historically been extremely successful, and that also has "fed" our troop in the past, though not for a few years now. It recruits from one of the larger elementary schools in town so it has a natural pool of new scouts. In the last two years the pack has struggled due to lack of adult leadership. The (former?) CM ended up working a shift that prevented him from attending any pack meetings, yet he didn''t/wouldn''t resign. His son is a W II this year but has already done everything for his AoL and is just waiting to be able to cross over at this point. The other den leaders vanished, or withered away due to lack of support. The CC was one of the only active people but he''s got a boatload of kids of his own and has apparently vanished now too. The pack''s CO is oblivious and they apparently do not have a UC (we don''t have a strong UC corp in our area). The pack has no plans to do any recruiting of scouts or leaders and seems to have unofficially collapsed. I''m on our district membership committee, which is how I know all of this. As such, it is not in our interest to see this pack die. This isn''t just a numbers game either - two years ago, this pack had 40+ boys and even last year, amid turmoil, they had 20 or so. What, if anything, is it reasonable for me and the other members of the district membership committee to DO here? Most of the things I''ve thought of involve us (membership folks) coming in and running the pack in more, or less, active ways and while honestly, I like cub scouts a lot, I''m not so sure this is the right thing to do. We have a district membership meeting on Monday night and I''d like to go in armed with some tangible ideas. What are your thoughts? Link to post Share on other sites
insanescouter 10 Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 first, I would see what interest there is at district and council level to try and save the pack second, are there several packs in the same area, if so maybe there are to many for the number of youth in the area third, the troop that has been feeding has a vested interest in at least talking to the leaders of the pack and offering to help save it forth, it sounds like it will take a lot of effort to save, so would require a strong CM and a strong committee chair. Also will take some recruiting effort to bring back the scouts and parents the last thing I can think of right now, is why did the leadership fail. what was the root cause? did the adults burn out? I know you said some had work shift changes, so why didn''t some one else take over at least some of what they were doing? Was there a fight of sorts between leaders? To me it sounds like there is a root problem that may need to be dealt with before anything else could be done. I hope my babbling and wacky 2 cents was of some help... Scott Robertson http://insanescouter.org [closing duplicate topic] (This message has been edited by a staff member.) Link to post Share on other sites
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