How We Plan Our Campouts

[TMSM]

I was asked to teach a few classes again at our district trainging acadamy but this time the wanted me to add a class that was totally differen to anything they had in the past and would inspire more scouters to take the training. I decided that I would teach my usual Scout Led Troop and Hammocking classes but add a class that details our way of doing our annual planning. After teaching this class I was asked to spread the word on this as it may help other troops that in a camping rut.

Some history: The first step was admitting that we camped at the same places, had low turn out and adults didmost of the planning. As a naive first month SM I assumed the scouts knew what they like to do outdoors and and what they wanted to do next year. I asked each scout, got lots of shoulder shrugs and from the older scouts I got "do the same thing as last year" although older scouts didnt camp last year.

Solution: Find out what scouts do in our area. I spent about 60+ hours looking at every troop site calendar and photos jotting down every campsite or camping theme,also looked at OA and district lists. I compiled a list down to 50 or so ideas that the scouts could use for planning. I showed the scouts the list but was mostly ignored.

It was then I decided to change how we did our planning. I agreed with the CC that we would do a 2 year trial to make camping more fun, get more scouts to attend and give more power to the scouts.

FIrst change was to declare that each scout would present at least 1 idea to the troop during our planning campout. I would provide the list of 50 campout ideas that they could choose from but they would have to do work to make the idea into a presentation.

Rules - Choose an idea from my list, choose an idea from my list and modify it, bring your own idea.

All presentations must have the following:

Where will the camp out be - What exact campground and site # if car camping

What will we do there? What advancement opportunities are possible

What will it cost for this campout?

What month(s) of the year should we go?

Why is this fun, why do this?

The expectation is 2 or 3 slides 5 minutes.

The first year we did this the older scouts hated it and fought the process - but the rest of the scouts came up with great ideas, many modifications of the ideas provided and during the presentations there was good discussion of what is fun and what is not between the scouts. We voted as a troop for each month - what outing would be best. The scouts that had their presentation/camping idea chosen won a prize and they would be used to create the agenda for that campout with the PLC when the time came. Sometimes 2 ideas were merged to make it even better

Once they vote on a campout its easy for the adults to take what the scouts have already planned and reserve the campsite, cabin or whatever else needed. We usually have everything reserved by the end of the week and distribute the yearly plan to parents.

Results: Scouts are happy that they get a say in what is possible, the discussions about what would be fun happen and are long and boisterous, scouts come to me all of the time with new ideas to add to the list. We went from 10% participation to 75% participation camping in the last 3 years. Adults do the back office stuff while scouts became much bigger stakeholders in what they do each month.

 

I hope this helps someone. I know we all do this different and the BSA assumes this is done by the PLC but we needed to make the change to help us survive as a troop.