Progressing towards forming a new troop - STAY TUNED :)

[AnneinMpls]

Hi folks,

I've really appreciated all your advice and wisdom as we move forward with our girls. We just arrived home last night from Lake Itasca (more in-depth overview of the trip in another topic).

 

All 4 of our new Juniors came and because of the bunking situation, I put our 2 most self-sufficent Brownies in with them to fill the room. Those 6 functioned like a well-oiled machine from a bygone era - I gotta say how very proud I am of these sharp young ladies.

Now this week we're heading into recruiting events for the Service Unit (District for you guys from the Red Planet ) If I bring in 4th 5th and 6th graders, can I stipulate a certain number of months in scouting as a requirement for patrol leader elections? How often should we have elections? Does 3 months give girls enough time in the position and enough rotation for more girls to learn the ropes?

SagerScout, regarding not bringing in 6th graders - I think I want to go ahead with this in order to get a critical mass together to get the troop up and running, then keep them in our troop and go to a combined Junior/Cadette program - the older ones can still participate in the Council events for their age level. If we have enough 6th grade on up, after a rotation through a patrol with all ages together, they can form a patrol of just cadette level girls. From there, it will be up to their patrol to make arrangements to take part in these council events or whatever else they want to do and we'll support them by providing the adult leaders they need in order to participate.

 

Right now, we have 2 critical areas to address: 1. making sure I'm not spread too thin leading both the Brownie troop and the new Junior troop - I havn't yet had another mom step up to the plate to lead the Brownies - I have a fabulous assistant leader who is my Sargeant-at-Arms when I don't even deserve to have one :] but as skilled and capable as she is she prefers to assist. 2. getting our SU registrar to get us a new troop number, whish shouldn't even be an issue, but this person has not returned my phone calls or emails all summer. 3. gotta check with our sponsoring org. to make sure they like the idea of having another troop using their meeting space.

I'm looking at http://www.wix.com/troop67/WebPages/Recruitment_and_New_Scouts/newscouthome.htm for some tips on recruiting. Any other resources you can recommend would be muchly appreciated

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

[SagerScout]

In our area you would not need a new troop number - you would simply change to a "multilevel" troop and retain your old number. You only need a new number if there were problems with the old (mom ran off with the cookie money or something).

 

 

 

[AnneinMpls]

Yes, I know we have many different options for how we can register. I've laid out the plan we've chosen, as well as specific questions that I have

Thanks!

Anne in Mpls

[AnneinMpls]

I put out my GS recruitment yard sign from last year...tonight 3 girls dropped by to find out how to join So we are now potentially at 7 girls for the new troop. Just hoping now for their parents to follow through...that's always the hard part. I actually do home visits to get registrations done!

Ok, so right now, we're at 1 7th, 1 6th, 1 5th, 4 4th - if they can each bring a friend, we'll be at 14. (The 7th 6th and 5th graders came together - 2 sisters and a best friend) The sisters are from a family we sold cookies to last year - I never realized cookies could be a recruitment tool... They said they have never been camping before - it's the top thing they want to do. So....I guess we'll do some camping Next Thurs is new member night - hoping to pick up some more then - new troop's looking like it'll have not much trouble growing afterall

[AnneinMpls]

G'morning!

Here's an update on the new troop:

I got leadership of the Brownies turned over to my asst. leader. Unfortunately, program there has now become mainly cut and paste crafts and they've cut frequency of meetings down to twice a month.

I'm still the committee chair for that troop, so I'll need to find a way to communicate to them on building the program back up. Changes were made without my input or I would have had a lot to say!

In the Junior-Cadette troop we have 8 active girls in three patrols. Patrols were closer to "patrol size" before we had 6 girls (all from the same family!) move out of state over the holidays. We have 9 active Brownies flying up - they have begun meeting with us on the weeks they don't have a Brownie meeting.

We were trying to do patrol leader meetingd separately from troop meetings, but attendance was an issue, and with such a small group, 3 pls and a treasurer, if one person is absent it leaves a big hole. We'll try having pl meetings right after troop meetings.

One of my asst. leaders is still too adult-directed - tends to want to sit the girls down and deliver information via lecture - I've not yet found a way to effectively curtail this.

We have our first overnight event coming up next week as we finally have some troop funds to work with. This one is basically a huge lock-in at the health club with many troops from all over the Council - swimming, yoga, basketball till 2 am and an opportunity to practice packing and shlepping gear and using the buddy system. The following month, I'm looking for a cabin-camping weekend and some day-long winter outdoor activities like cross-country skiing. I'm hoping to get the girls up to speed on camping skills in time for the area-wide Prairie Flower encampment, and hit some state parks for camping over the summer months - some situated for canoeing, and one has caving closeby. So I think we're going in the right direction for active program, but patrol system is looking like it will take a while to develop as we're a youngish inexperienced group.

Advice and comments are always appreciated!

Peace,

Anne in Mpls

[AnneinMpls]

Well, it's been rocky...

We lost nearly *half* our troop when one family moved out of state. (They had 5 girls!)

3 of the remaining girls are related (cousins) - one of whom is "wallet girl" (stole my wallet after the first meeting of the year) and one of whom the family is refusing to pay for their cookies from the cookie sale...we are trying to tactfully work through the situation but I do think we will lose these three girls as well.

We are left with two girls who are my asst. leaders' daughters, and two other wonderful girls with somewhat sporadic attendance. We also have 9 Brownies flying up (one of whom is my kiddo). So we have basically 13 right now but no cohesive group feel after 7 months.

We have had a fairly full program: astronomy nights at the Observatory, snowshoeing, swimming, two weekends of cabin camping (no camping background for any of the girls and we're finally into good weather!)

I want to continue building our outdoor program. I want to recruit but I worry about how to do this successfully. It feels like it's been a year of false starts so far.

The more I write and think, the more obvious it seems that we need to do some heavy recruiting. What is step number one in doing recruiting?

Anne confabulated in Mpls