Merit Badge College

[NeilLup]

I might mention something else about our Merit Badge University which is described in the January 2004 Boy's Life. It occurs on TWO Saturdays about 4 weeks apart. In the first one, the Scouts are introduced to the Merit Badge, meet the counselor, do a little and are given at-home assignments. In the second, they bring back the assignments and meet again with the counselor. Perhaps they earn the badge then.

 

Nobody gets the badge in one day.

[Eamonn]

To answer Fat Old Guy about the District Committee. Most of our time is spent planning events that have to do with Membership and Finance. The Chair. Will report what is happening or what has happened at the Council level and we see what we can do to make it work.

Most of the time we do not spend time on the specifics. If the Activities Chair. Informs us that the camporee will be at such and such a place and the theme will be whatever. We are happy to run with it. After the event there will be a report and there might need to be a change in the way we do something. For example for many years we always charged a set $3.00 for a District Camporee. We looked at this and while some members of the committee thought that it was wrong to raise the cost. We voted and the cost is no longer fixed.

As a rule we normally only vote when there is a sense of disagreement within the committee.

The District Commissioner does give a report on the health of the units. If we see that there is a problem we will dispatch a member of the committee to try and help. The other year we had a unit that said that it didn't have the money to recharter, so we send the finance chair to help them come up with a budget. The chartered Organization ended up paying the fee that year after I called them.

So we don't vote on every thing. However once we do that is it. If the activity committee came to the meeting and wanted to start a Merit Badge College, I feel that there might be some resistance to the idea so we would vote. No matter what my feeling are I would have to abide by the winners.

Eamonn