NYLT held at Summer Camp

[SR540Beaver]

I must have been engrossed in my BBQ sandwich when the SE supposedly made this announcement at the Council Program Kickoff last night. I was told he said that we would model off of another council and offer NYLT during summer camp. In the past we have offered a single NYLT course in late July after summer camps and high adventure contingent trips are over. My son has staffed NYLT the past two summers and I've seen the syllabus. I've staffed WB twice and will be staffing again this coming spring. I sent an email to a friend of mine who is the council training chair for confirmation, but have not heard back yet.

 

My questions are these. Is anyone familar with this approach and do they have experience with it? How do you fit this in at a camp where summer camp is going on? It seems that you would need a whole separate program area away from the main camp. How do you staff multiple weeks of the course? Do you have the same SM and staff the whole time or have multiple staffs developing during the spring? If it is at summer camp and the same staff does it for four weeks, are they paid staff members?

 

Doing a simple Goolge search, the only council I can find that does this is the Blue Ridge Council which holds four courses back to back at their summer camp.

 

http://www.bsa-brmc.org/foxfire.htm

[SR540Beaver]

Forgot to say, we had a national scouter their as the keynote speaker. He was Joe Glasscock of the Boy Scouts of America National Council, Program Impact Department, Volunteer Development Team Leader. I did hear him say that NYLT will be opened up to Venturing and I believe he said Sea Scouts as well. I asked the council training chair to confirm that as well in the email I sent.

[sherminator505]

I don't know how large your council is, but the question that pops out for me is - how are they going to get an acceptable class size for each summer camp session?

[SR540Beaver]

Sherm,

 

Good question. This year I believe there were 30 youth who attended and there was no real promotion other than word of mouth. It has much greater potential as our council covers 24 counties of Oklahoma and serve over 30,000 youth in all programs. I'm wondering if the thinking is that by doing it at summer camp, it will accomplish a couple of objectives. It will get more troops to stay in council for summer camp. It will get greater participation since boys will already be coming to camp and it won't be another week out of their summer.

[GernBlansten]

Is their plan to have the youth camp with their troop, some boys doing meritbadge stuff, the NYLT guys heading off to do that program during the day? Then return for meals and evening programs?

I don't see how you could blend both programs. NYLT around these parts is a 100% dedicated week long program. No time to mix back with your troop of younger guys.

[Vicki]

Our largest scout ranch(S-F in the Greater St. Louis Area Council) has four camps. They rotate usage of the camps on a three-year basis so that NYLT has exclusive use of one of the camps. The main reason is to allow the camp to recover from the high-impact use that summer camp represents - NYLT is a lot lower impact. The camps are far enough apart that it's easy to keep the programs separate.

 

As far as staffing is concerned, NYLT staff are volunteers and set up on a completely separate track from camp staff. Camp staff works all summer. The four weeks of NYLT have four separate staffs - admittedly there are several youth who work more than one session, but that's not the norm.

 

That said, I've staffed NYLT twice - I don't see any way to effectively blend any sort of NYLT experience with summer camp. One of NYLT's goals is to get scouts away from their home troop for a different experience. Not to mention that the syllabus is really busy (similar to Wood Badge).

 

I will say we are blessed to have a lot of very engaged youth in our council.

 

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

[SR540Beaver]

Let me clarify, I never menat to give the impression that boys would go to summer camp and stay with their unit while doing NYLT. I know our property and know there are not enough facilities to run NYLT segregated from the rest of camp. What I found out over the weekend is that the council is adding a 7th week and it will be a specialized week that concentrates on horsemanship, auqatics and NYLT. The NYLT staff will still be volunteer recruits and the course will be run by the week. NYLT in the past has been done at a property where cub resident camp and our two WB courses per year have been held. By moving it to the property where they do Boy Scout summer camp and tacking it on as a 7th week, the camp is already prepared to receive folks, there is maintenance staff on hand who are preparing for shutting down camp and they can retain the kitchen staff to provide the needed food service. It solves some logistical issues, moves the program to the Boy Scout intensive property and allows them to continue running it segregated.

 

Personally, I'd like to see NYLT, WB and OA Ordeals rotated between our four properties instead of being ingrained in one place or another out of "tradition", but that is another issue altogether.

[Horizon]

Where we are it looks like this:

 

Just before school lets out: OA Ordeal at the Council Camp

The week following: NYLT

One week later: Summer Camp begins.

 

The Ordeal and NYLT sessions help serve to get the camp into shape, shakedown, test out, find issues, etc.

 

The only downside is that for some of the families in my troop, the trip to the Council Camp was made 3 times in as many weeks!

[Lisabob]

Beaver, at first I thought "that's a terrible idea!" But the more I think about it, and having read your last post describing how it would be arranged, I find I like it more and more.

 

My son did NYLT in early June. He had a great time, learned a lot. He took NYLT in preparation for becoming the SPL this fall, but he's been very busy with non-scouting activities in the intervening time (almost three months from when he took the course to when the troop starts up again) and I suspect he has lost a little of the excitement and forgotten some of the ideas that he came back from NYLT with. It might have been more effective to take the course at the end of the summer, when he could apply the material to his troop right away. (Live and learn, right?) If your council is making use of existing infrastructure at the end of the camp season, maybe that will work out really well for boys who can take NYLT straight back to their troops in the fall.

 

 

[GernBlansten]

Our council has two camps. One is a mega camp, broken into two programs, one is patrol cooking, the other dining hall. It has an adjoining cub camp. No NYLT there. This camp is huge and out in the plains of Colorado. It has the lake, the rifle range, the horses, the swimming pool, the merit badges.

 

The other camp is small and up in the mountains. It's used for our winter OKPIK high adventure, our own Philmont style backpacking high adventure, OA functions, a COPE program, troop developed summer camp programs and NYLT. They hold 5 weeks of NYLT each summer there.

 

Typically, a scout in our unit will choose whether to attend summer camp with the troop at the mega camp, or do NYLT at the smaller camp. But not both. We don't restrict it, but they typically won't do both.

 

Sounds like its really no different than SR540 council is proposing, we just do it at different camps.