good turn for America program

[Lisabob]

I'm curious about other people's perspectives on this. Every time I hear about it, I become more ambivalent about the actual benefit of having this formal program. What starts out sounding like a nice idea seems to get overtaken by motives other than simple community service.

 

Some folks seem to take the view that once they have completed the GTA requirements for the year, there's limited value in encouraging additional community service that doesn't result in a patch or doesn't fulfill any particular requirement. Lesson to the kids: community service is a once-a-year effort motivated by getting something, instead of an on-going effort motivated by community spirit, empathy, and good will.

 

Some folks get so caught up in logging the # of hours that they enter all sorts of odd things. Locally, I've heard of a few pretty dubious "service" efforts in this department. Some folks seem to be more interested in getting some kind of recognition for the hours than they are in improving the lives of people in their community.

 

It all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Heck, this is the Boy Scouts of America! Boys ought to be encouraged to "do a good turn daily" because that's just the right thing to do and part of being a good citizen and community member. If they want a reward, it should be the smile they bring to someone's face, or the knowledge that they helped and the good feeling that comes with that.

[GKlose]

Last spring, I tried mobilizing the four troops and four packs in our town for a town-wide service project (annual town cleanup, sponsored by the town's "solid waste advisory committee", for Earth Day). I even tried contacting the local GS Council (who wouldn't give me contact names for the units in our town).

 

I'm thinking this is a really easy service project. The committee provides supplies, tools, water and snackage. Pick an area of town, show up, fill some trash bags, transport them back to the dumpster.

 

What I got was crickets chirping. Not a single taker, including my older son's scout troop (I registered as an adult leader about two weeks afterwards). My younger son's pack -- the CC/CM (one-man show) said that he didn't want to have anything to do with it and I could do whatever I wanted. Roughly 40 to 50 families in the pack, only three volunteered for the crew I led. One was a no-show. One of the others, however, brought a neighboring mom and kids.

 

At the time, I was pretty perturbed about the contact I had with Girl Scouts. The council website listed, on their front page, a series of service projects a unit could do, one of which was "planting flowers for Mother's Day at the Council offices". Here I thought I was pitching something that is pretty simple to do and has good community impact. The admin I contacted told me she would let the units in town know about the project, but I didn't get contacted by any of them. I'm more understanding now because I didn't get contacted by any of the BSA units either.

 

Why does it always have to be about Good Turn patches, or service project hours for rank advancement, or providing labor for Eagle projects? Where did the concept of doing community service for the sake of community service go?

 

Guy

 

[John-in-KC]

IMNSHO, National really bolo'd it when we left the signature service project "Scouting For Food" behind.

 

BSA WAS KNOWN for helping stock pantries and shelters Nationwide. We were a major source, along with the big regional food banks. Now the economy is in the tank, food is needed by many, and it's simply units randomly volunteering to do this.

 

What a crock.

[ManyHats]

This was the first year we gave out GTA patches. We didn't tell the boys they would get them either. It seems to be the same ones that volunteer. (Usually leader kids plus a few others) We thought it might motivate others to volunteer too. I agree that they shouldn't have to be rewarded to do a good turn, but at the Cub level it's more the parents than the kids.

We will only give out one patch, but annouce the kids that earned it again.

[GKlose]

We do Scouting for Food on a council basis -- I didn't realize that national had dropped it. In our district, I'd estimate that half our units participated. In our town, 8 units, I'd guess that only 2 or 3 participated (ours was one).

 

The "feeder pack" CM and I traded some email. He said that he didn't have time to take on a new project. I suggested that he just send out email to the pack and just do a collection from those families. He thought that was a good idea, but I don't think it happened.

[gwd-scouter]

National abandoned Scouting for Food? I hadn't heard of that. We do it every February in our Council.

 

About Good Turn for America. I still log in our Troop's service projects, but we've never given out the patch. Our Council office has them, but not the year rockers. When the program came out I remember telling the boys about it, but not since then. Does anyone outside of Boy Scouts even know about GTA? Never heard any publicity about it outside of the Scouting community and actually not for several years within the Scouting community.

 

We do 3-4 service projects a year because that's what Scouts do, not for a patch.

[John-in-KC]

What my District Activities Chair told us, whenever GTFA was rolled out:

 

National, and our Council, no longer run a coordinated Scouting For Food. Your units may do it if you like. Scouting instead has this new program which supports all service projects... it's called Good Turn for America.

 

Perception in my neck of the woods was it's gone. I'm really, really glad to hear other councils didn't drop it!

[Lisabob]

I got a pretty similar message to what John describes. Our district has a designated GTA guy who is supposed to log all the hours any units tell him about, for the whole district. This has become a district committee position. I've asked a couple of times what the point is in having a district GTA position. Don't get me wrong, the individual in that position is a great guy, talented and passionate about scouting, but I can just see so many other holes that he could fill instead and this appears to be a make-work position. The one answer that has made any sense at all is that it is easier to do PR related to scouting when you have one person that can tell the local media about all the good stuff scouts are doing in the community. But I'm not sure I really buy that either, as we still don't get that much publicity and when we do, many times it isn't generated by him.

 

Scouting for Food still happens (I think) locally but is coordinated mainly by individual units. Some years the actual coordination part is pretty thin. We could do a better job with this. Alas, the GTA position in our district doesn't include organizing Scouting for Food, although it does include recording # of hours of participation.

 

[ManyHats]

Our troop and pack continue to do food drives. In our case it's double win. We collect the food and give it to our CO (church), who gives it to the local food bank. Good graces with the CO and food goes to people that need it.

[baschram645]

We do Scouting for Food every April as a joint project with the Pack in town. Since the local Girl Scout chair is in our troop (Adv Chr) she lets leaders know about times and places to pass along to GS troops.

 

We do several projects each year. Patrol the Black River during sturgeon spawn to help keep out poachers. The boys have also acted as waiters/busboys/dish washers at benefit dinners in our town. The pack does a Hike/Clean up in town every May. Besides Eagle Projects we average about 6 to 8 projects each year. We just never report them to GTFA. An article in our town paper is all we do or need.

 

One of the very basic tenets of scouting is "To help other people at all times". So regardless of what our District, Council, Region or National boards promote, we have made this part of our program. We have even had a few families in our units who have needed a hand up so we know the program is helping our own.

 

Bryan

 

[Eagledad]

I agree with Lisa that we should be more focused on doing a good turn daily. Our troop did spend some time on the subject now and then. I have several SM Minutes to that subject, but honestly, we were pretty good at helping the community. I'm sure we could have done better, but the got a lot of practice.

 

I taught our PLC that the scout goals are the Eight Methods and the adult goals are the Three Aims. I asked the PLC to make sure that all the scouts have opportunities to practiced citizenship, character and fitness on every campout. That usually included summer camp and high adventure as well. At first that scared them a little until they realize that most of what they do on campouts is practicing fitness and character, it was just the citizenship that required a little planning. But even that turned out to be pretty easy because the areas we camped usually needed some kind of maintenance that required the muscle of all the scouts.

 

I was always trying to find fun ways to get the scouts to think in the ideals of scouting. I always had a pocket full of Fireballs candy to reward any good turn I saw from the scouts. At first it was kind of a joke that the scouts would purposely act out some good turn to get candy. But once the joke part wore off, they started taking them as badges of honor, I think because they found that selfless acts made them feel good about themselves. I also always put out a whole box of Tootsie Pop suckers in the camps for anyone to take. They could have as many as they wanted provided I or the SPL never found a wrapper and they never took more than one at a time. If we saw the rules were broken, the box was taken away for the rest of the day. That only happened a few times before they caught on. I remember one scout on the PLC commenting how those suckers reinforced the idea of character when nobody was looking.

 

Our council quit doing the Scouting For Food Drive because a private group took it over for all of Oklahoma City, which included all the businesses and any other organization who wanted to participate in the food drive. It turned political, so the Council bailed out and we were all grateful because it was a mess.

 

When we did do it, I had a hard time with it because the Council kept trying to make it more efficient. They wanted more food for less work because the adults keep complaining how much time it took because it required two weekends. The first weekend to deliver food bags, the second to pick them up. So to help reduce the complaints, they ask the units to deliver the sacks at the door without knocking. The sack had instructions for the house owner to leave the sack on the porch the next Saturday. I didnt like that because I wanted our scouts to meet the community and visa-versa. And I couldnt see how it really helped the adults anyway. I used to joke with the District Committee that the Troops had it down to a Mafeking type of activity of hiding in the bushes until the owners went inside the house and then they jumped up, dropped off the sack and ran to the next house.

 

I solve the two weekend problem by skipping the first weekend, than have the scouts carry the food bag with them to each house, knock on the door, introduce themselves and why they were there and ask for the food. We found out the scouts really enjoyed meeting the folks, especially the Cubs. They seem to have a great adventure story for every house and you would be surprised how many adults wanted to tell their experiences as a scout. IT turned out to be great public relations for the scouts and it was something the scouts look forward to every year.

 

Well we had been doing it that way for about five years when I joined the District committee and I proposed the same idea to the District. I also explained that our community needed to meet our scouts and this was the best opportunity for doing that. They werent sure how the units would like it, but they tried it. It turned out to be a huge success because the units liked it and it tripled the collection of food. So our District commissioner and DE asked me to propose the idea to Council. They also decided to try it the next year, but that was the year they had the falling out with the city and it was never tried.

 

As for keeping a log, I know our scouts did that because we taught them to do all their own paperwork, but our troop did so many community projects, it just was never a big topic of discussion. If the scout was active at all in the troop, they had the hours.

 

Good subject, Lisabob.

 

Barry

 

[ScoutNut]

My council still does a coordinated Scouting For Food in May. We do it in conjunction with the USPS Letter Carriers food drive. We also put out bags on one weekend, and pick up the food the next. However, any food we miss gets picked up by the letter carrier.

 

This works out great because we are helping fill food pantries, and helping out our local letter carriers at the same time!

 

I must say though, every year I try to get more from my Pack involved, and every year it is my Tigers who are out there working on their own. Last year my 3 Tigers were exhausted when they were done. I was so proud of them. Both for bag hand out, and food pick up, as we walked the neighborhood, they had extra bags that they filled with trash they picked up along the way. The best part was it was entirely their own idea! The first weekend the boys just started picking up trash, and dropping it in available trash cans, as we walked over to our assigned area. The next weekend they came armed with grocery bags for their trash pick-up. Needless to say, I gave them all a "Scout Spirit" award at our next Pack meeting!

 

As a Pack we also do service. Our biggest one is a Haunted House Foodraiser we put on every year for our church's food pantry. Others are smaller, and are usually helping with projects for our CO (church) such as working with the Garden Group for spring and fall cleanup and planting.

 

We also have never logged our hours in GTA.

 

[Eagledad]

>>I must say though, every year I try to get more from my Pack involved, and every year it is my Tigers who are out there working on their own.

[fgoodwin]

John, I guess our Council missed the memo.

 

We still do Scouting for Food as a Council, and that IS our Good Turn for America event. Of course, units are free to do additional GTA events as well.

 

And we've been giving out the patches and rockers for 2-3 years now, at least.

[shortridge]

I'd always thought, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that Scouting for Food was supposed to be a national thing - you know, hundreds of thousands of Scouts from across the country handing out bags and collecting food on the exact same days. Can anyone recall if that was ever part of the program, or did I just make that up?