Hello from Oklahoma

[EagleonFire]

I have been a stalker of this forum for over a year and am finally deciding to sign up. I am an old Eagle Scout that grew up and decided that I needed to do for kids what someone once did for me. Our small town no longer had any scouting programs as before the Boy Scout and Girl Scout chapters closed years ago. To solve this and provide scouting for everyone I teamed up with Camp Fire about a year and a half ago and got a club going. I'm kinda the odd ball in that group because we run much like the BSA of my day but use the Camp Fire curriculum.

[Stosh]

Welcome to the forum!!

[qwazse]

Welcome, and thanks for all you do for the kids!

One of my aunts is possibly the oldest living Campfire Girl. She was one of my inspirations for promoting our Venturing Crew.

[MattR]

That's wonderful that you want to help out. Thanks for sharing.

 

I know nothing about the Camp Fire program. Could you describe how it's different from Boy Scouts?

[EagleonFire]

I'm still learning myself but it seems to be more based on building self esteem on talking about self worth instead of skill building. Some of the other things is in the younger ages the kinds earn emblems much like merit badges but when they get older they earn beads for to completion of a what would equivocate out to a merit badge. Different colored beads for different categories of skill. Then the beads are laced onto a more traditionally native style of dress or tunic. Much like you would find in OA. The other big one is it seems to be very much unstructured with a ton of discretion left to the Leaders. That is both good and bad. There isn't a push to be an outdoors type of Scout, it's really how you choose to run your club. Oh and it's coed.

 

Last thing I can think of now is that kids don't rank up, which I hate. They progress by age/grade level until they are freshmen. At that point they work towards their WOHELO, which is the campfire equivalent to an Eagle Scout, however you can not earn it until you are a senior or 17 years old. At that point you must submit a book documenting your last 4 years of volunteering, leadership, completed lessons for their beads. Letters of recommendation, and essay. It turns into a 6"binder. I'm terrified of getting kids to that age

[MattR]

From what little I know, the advancement part sounds similar to girl scouts. It's mostly by age. I wouldn't like it either. I can imagine that submitting a 6" binder, and then wondering whether 4 years of work is going to be accepted or not is a lot worse than what we complain about.

 

Is leadership among the kids, within the unit, part of the program? I guess what I'm asking is there something similar to the patrol method? Or is that what you are adding because you have the flexibility?

[EagleonFire]

There is a leadership piece where the older kids have to teach the younger kids and to receive their wohelo have to spend time with a different campfire club teaching and assisting but nothing like the patrol method. That is something that I am bringing to our group. We do a very small amount of that now, they are just to young and inexperienced to go full on patrol method now but it will be in full effect in about 2 more years

[EagleonFire]

Oh and I have heard the horror stories from some of the old guard campfire Leaders about that WOHELO book. When it's broken Dow it doesn't seem much different than having to earn each rank it just sucks that 1 you can't push to earn it earlier 2 the kid and leader have to hold on to all of this stuff and documentation for 4 years and 3 there is no short term reward to keep a kid motivated.

[Ankylus]

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!