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Guest Speakers at Courts of Honor


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A friend of mine in North Forida Council said he regularly invites guest speakers to his troop's Courts of Honor. A 5 or 10 minute inspiration from a public figure or well known personality. We have not done this, but I think it is a superb idea. I'd like to start this tradition, but would like to hear from y'all about your experiences.

 

Do any of you have guest speaker programs? Any advice?

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We normally do not have guest speakers at regular COH's, but rather only at Eagle COH's. At those we give the Eagle candidate first choice on who he would like to have speak. If he has no preference, I usually invite a Committee member who is an Eagle, a teacher, a veteran Scouter from another unit, Commissioner, or even our DE or SE to speak.

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We usually have a guest speaker at one COH during the year - our February banquet. Used to have them more frequently but, to be honest, we started running out of ideas as to who to invite (when people start suggesting repeats, you know you are in trouble) and the boys found several of the speakers to be rather 'boring'. Stay away from local politicians, unless they were a scout and can relate that experience. We've had recent success with soldiers returning from Iraq, an astronaut, a professional baseball player, very old scouters who scouted during the 1940's, FBI director. the common denominator in all cases was that they had a scouting background and could provide concrete examples as to how scouting has helped them in their lives. Beyond 15 minutes and the scouts start yawning - unless the speaker has some visual aids. Good luck.

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