Regional and out of council activities? - HELP PLEASE!

[Scouter.]

It is obvious that a council can only sponsor so many activities.

 

Additionally, Woodbadge may only be held 1x a year or less and yet there are still interested parties that want to pursue Woodbadge.

 

Some councils off international events, while others do not.

 

In my experience, it is a challenge to find all of the surrounding councils, review their websites, and try to find activities the youth may be interested in,

 

That is not to mention "Area" or "Regional" events that may be taking place.

 

In your honest opinion, how do you find these opportunities? I have not found any websites that offer Jo that information, nor have any other mom's I know.

 

The Southern Region has a website, but it is all but defunct.

 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks...Scouter

[Basementdweller]

Our council stinks.....Our district is even lower than that....

 

I look at all of the neighboring councils websites.....I have been at it a number of years and have my favorite cub events nailed and starting too look at the BS events to present to the PLC.

 

 

Why is it a challenge??? I like doing it Thursday evenings....my only home night of the week.....I have the council website activity pages booked marked.... Takes 10 minutes tops.

[Oak Tree]

I too have found this frustrating. I'd like it if National had an easy way to track these down. At a minimum, it would be nice to have a map of the US that had all the council boundaries on it so you could click on any council to get to their web site.

 

When I've wanted to track down opportunities in the past, I've had to search the web for the councils and try to figure out what their boundaries were, and then find the training activities on their web sites (which are all different). This has worked ok, but it is slow and inefficient and I'm sure it's not complete.

[KC9DDI]

It seems like most districts and councils have monthly or bi-monthly email newsletters that they use to promote these types of events. I bet many districts and councils will let you subscribe to these email lists from their website. Failing that, I'd shoot a quick email to a DE of a neighboring district or council asking to be kept informed of any upcoming activities or events.

 

Out of curiosity, assuming this is a Boy Scout troop, why not task various members of your PLC (or even non-PL youth leaders) with tracking down this information. Youth tend to be skilled at being able to find things on the Internets :-).

[SeattlePioneer]

I look at the various councils in Washington state from time to time for program ideas, activities and such.

[eisely]

I like the idea of having the boys scour the internet for ideas and opportunities.

[Scouter.]

I've gotta echo what Oak Tree stated in substance...that it's a bit of a forensic search to locate local councils and districts to see IF the have program offerings that might be of interest to our units.

 

Again...geographic boundaries which are unknown and councils which we don't know are local neighbors makes the research difficult.

 

I don't knock the scouts doing the searches, but what about, Area training, Adult Regional training, and other WB course offerings?

 

Bottom line - I would reall like to see the ability for scouts and scouters to interact on an Inter-council, area, region basis to increase scouting on not just the extremely local basis,

 

 

[TAHAWK]

List of Councils and addresses. http://www.angelfire.com/wy/gilwell/links.html

[Scouter.]

TAHAWK...thanks. Now if I can just piece some of that together geographically so I can figure out the Area and Region of those closest to us.

 

Regardless, I have never seen anything like that on an official BSA website.

 

Again, thanks for sharing that.

 

Peace... S.

[Papadaddy]

My council has an e-newsletter that anyone with an email address can subscribe to.

[Stosh]

I had someone just recently ask me about a BSA camp that was located less than an hour and a half drive away. I had never heard of it yet it was a camp 45 miles from the out-of-council BSA camp my boys attended regularly.

 

I seriously do not know of all the camps that are located within a 3 hour drive of my home.

 

That's sad to say the least.

 

How many good opportunities are the boys missing just because the councils/regions/national can't communicate effectively.

 

Stosh

[SR540Beaver]

It's really not that hard. Go to Google, type in "boy scout council" and the name of your state. Among the many links I received back were links for each of the councils in Oklahoma. Just about every council site has links to their camp properties, training and a calendar that lists all of the district and council activities. Then it helps to go to Roundtable and do a little networking. I don't know if all councils do it, but we have a quarterly council coordinated meeting which is kind of like a council wide roundtable. All of the different council committees have breakout sessions after a general meeting. But anything that is coming up within the council gets advertised at this meeting.

[Stosh]

All well and good, but the councils that support the camps mentioned in my previous post were out-of-state councils! I know of three states that support camps in our state.

 

Stosh

[TAHAWK]

Google: scout OR scouts camp