District Camporee Planning

[CaveEagle]

Who is resposible for planning district camping events?

 

My old council would form a committee for each event. My current council has troops "host" camporees. After 3 yrs of observing the "troop" hosted events, I am not impressed. We actually had a district camporee cancelled last year because nobody "stepped up" to host the event.

 

Our unit (

[dancinfox]

In the district program can be split between Boy Scouting, Cub Scouting, Venturing, etc. If your district had a Boy Scout Division and there was a District Boy Scout Chair, then he or she could appoint a District Activities Chair who would then bring together a District Activities Committee hopefully not made up of Scoutmasters or other Unit Leaders. This committee could plan the district activities, ie: Spring Camporee, Fall Camporee, Klondike Derby, etc. If done right as a

[Eagle Foot]

In our district we have a district planning person, who is also the District Boy Scout Camping Chairman. This person plans the camporees and builds a camporee committee. It has worked very well...we also tried to use the troops to plan it, some times it was great, sometimes it diden't happen.

 

At present I am this person, if you would like more information feel fee to contact me I be happy to share with you what ever I can.

 

Eagle Foot.

[Fuzzy Bear]

After being part of the District Activities Committee, being in charge of several Camporees, planning District Camporees, being on staff of many District Camporees, I think I have an answer.

 

I have generally never seen a complete failure no matter how badly they were done. One I observed was well on its way down the dumpster but was pulled out by just plain dumb positive attitudes. I don't want to pat myself on the back too hard but I almost pulled off a couple of pretty sorry Camporees without really trying. I have even put together a Camporee on the way to the event. I just loaded up my garage and hoped that nothing would blow off on the way there.

 

OK, now that you know that I have my moments I want to share with you a secret that finally sunk in to my thick little pumpkin head. I was complaining about a Camporee, most likely done by me, to one of the female volunteers. She pointed out that the District Committee Chair for Activities was not to plan the event but to recruit someone to do it.

 

I began to think and sure enough I figured out that the District Activities Chair not only didn't plan the event but had not really been recruiting anybody to do it either. More thought....

 

What was wrong? I then knew why they had not been doing their job. They had found several chumps to take the lead, accept the responsibility and the job was done. The next point was that the events were not being evaluated systematically for a reason. They were done but not very well and few wanted to complain for fear of becoming the new event leader.

 

So, basically I was what was wrong. I enjoyed doing them. I knew allot of people that I could call at the last minute and get the job done even if it was the Friday night of the event.

 

So, I asked the Committee Chair for permission to recruit a person for the next Camporee. He said yes and I found the newest and greenest person at the next Roundtable. I told him if he would accept the mission that I would see to it that he would have the most successful event in years.

 

We planned an agenda for the next several weeks. The first week we looked at the jobs and duties. He decided on a theme and then we were off. Each week we recruited another person. We went over their job and they chose an event and possibly one maintenance job. The next week all three of us recruited another person and so on. By the time of the Camporee, there were patches, Tee shirts, hats, loads of events and materials for those events and enough people to make it a success. I had long ago stopped going to the meetings and only showed up at the event to be shown around.

 

He was as proud as punch at being in charge of such a spectacle and was planning to invite a person that was impressed with his success to chair the next one. I told him to get in touch with the Activities Chair and get it approved.

 

That was the start of the end of my many hats career in Scouting.

 

FB

(This message has been edited by Fuzzy Bear)

[evmori]

In my district, the Activities Committee is in charge of camporees. They usually recruit Troops who plan the Camporees.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[wojauwe]

In our district the OA chapter is in charge of planning and organiseing our camporee program.The commitee is aproved by our District outdoor chair.We don't restrict commitee positions to OA but it turns out that the involved people are arrowmen.

We use other smaller event planning earlier in the program year to help train our youth for the big event planning.Our camporee has had 850 to 1000 participants

over the past few years.We use the troops to run different game stations and the recruiting of these units and putting together of program is the prime duty of

the chapter.

So far we have done a good job.If we were to blow it, there is no doubt that the District committee would step in and change the management.

there are 26 Districts/Chapters in our Council/Lodge and the OA runs about 1/2 the camporees.

just within our council there are a large variety of approachs depending on the

philosophical make up of District.