Venturing Youth at Wood Badge

[qwazse]

At my Wood-badge course there were ventures there as young as 14; had one in my patrol. I got the impression that our council was requiring it. Many were part of Wood-badge staff and ran several of the "challenges," etc.

BD, no surprise there. Some crews are formed just to serve the needs of the council. Most of us are a far cry from giving our young adults real authority.

 

SR540, thanks for the window into the syllabus. This is where we fall short. Our VOA had become mega-event planners with little leadership/management responsibility. Calling around for venturers to come out and present their program to WBers would have been far less kludgy than watching our staff "go through the motions" of swearing in as a new crew.

[SR540Beaver]

At my Wood-badge course there were ventures there as young as 14; had one in my patrol. I got the impression that our council was requiring it. Many were part of Wood-badge staff and ran several of the "challenges," etc.

qwazse, I have no idea the percentage of courses across the country that actually use Venturers. My council never has. I'm willing to bet many others don't. It's hard enough to do the staff development with the staff. It would be even tougher to bring additional people (youth with the kind of schedules they have) into the mix and train them for just a small portion they would have. It adds a layer of complexity to the process. Now, that's not saying it's a bad idea, just that it can make things more difficult than a volunteer Course Director wants to fool with. I'll add another wrinkle to the complexity. In MY council, we have some guy who is in charge or "talent". A WB or NYLT CD doesn't just get to name the people they want. They can suggest. They can give a list. But all staffing for course has to run through a series of people as well as this talent guy to get people approved to staff........and that's just approval to ask them to staff. If you get turned down, you go back thru the process again. I always counsel new CD's to make an A, B and C list and get names approved all at once so thatwhen people turn you down, you still have others to ask. Adding a youth component to the course just makes for a bigger list and more approvals.

[NeverAnEagle]

At my Wood-badge course there were ventures there as young as 14; had one in my patrol. I got the impression that our council was requiring it. Many were part of Wood-badge staff and ran several of the "challenges," etc.

qwazse: The Crew taught Leave-no-Trace, covered information on backpacking, went over camp selection, produced model campsites, ran the challenge course, and lead the ethical discussions in each patrol. Each Patrol was assigned a Venturing Youth to act as our troop guide for the second weekend; first weekend our den leader was an adult. We we told this was to show the difference between boy led and youth led organizations.

 

SR540Beaver: we never crossed over to a crew. We went from Pack to Troop. The course never covered Venturing, if we had questions we could ask the crew members in our "free time." The SM made a point of saying the she never took the "wood-badge pledge" so she didn't feel obligated to follow the syllabus. She said our council puts on a better program that what-ever national is prescribing.

[SR540Beaver]

At my Wood-badge course there were ventures there as young as 14; had one in my patrol. I got the impression that our council was requiring it. Many were part of Wood-badge staff and ran several of the "challenges," etc.

NAE, you are correct that the patrol does not transition from a patrol to a crew. My bad. Venturing is modeled by the Troop Guides who go thru an induction ceremony on the night of day four I believe. But the course does indeed touch on Venturing and one path for that is the use of Venturing youth during the second weekend. As far as what your CD said, I have a hard time believing that. I've staffed 4 WB course, one of which I was backup CD and staffed 2 NYLT courses. I was backup CD on one and CD on the other. I've attended 2 Course Director Development Conferences which are required to be a CD and for the council to hold a course. If you don't send someone who has been approved, you will not hold a course. They don't allow wiggle room on that. That is where you stand in front of everyone at the conference and take the pledge verbally and also sign in writing that you WILL follow the syllabus as written. It's an honor thing of course, but if Regional and/or National who has to approve council courses were to discover that your council were not adhering to the pledge and syllabus, they would not allow another course until that was corrected. It actually IS a very BIG thing to BSA. They allow for local traditions and flavor, but do not allow doing your own thing.

[JoeBob]

And they think that's a good thing?

 

Sorry. I just couldn't help myself...