Author: Jeffrey Heck
Building Relationships with Chartered Organization
Many scout troops and packs are looking for ways to make their relationships with their Chartered Organizations more meaningful.
Our District’s Troop 73 is hosting an event for its Chartered Organization. Here is how they describe it:
Event: T-73 Hosts St. Paul’s Summer Fellowship
Where: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
When: Jul 24, 2016, 9am – 12pmTroop 73 will host St. Paul’s Summer Fellowship after the 10 am service on July 24th. We will provide hot dogs, bratwurst, buns and toppings, s’mores and the campfire to cook it over as well as several dutch over desserts (bring your favorite recipe!) . Scouts will demonstrate and teach parishioners about: how to load and paddle a canoe (similar to our trip earlier this summer); using tents and hammocks; sawing logs; & tying knots. Please be ready to demonstrate any of these skills. If you have other ideas, please suggest them!
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Your time spent at the Fellowship will count as service to St. Paul’s, our Chartering Organization.
Now imagine you are the minister of that church. Your scout troop offers to host a Fellowship event. What is your estimation of scouting at that church going to be? What would you be willing to do to empower scouting?
District Reminders for next 7 days
1. Thursday, July 14th at 6:30 pm is Roundtable at St Luke’s United Methodist Church (New room assignment Room W-125 (Entry #4) due to scheduling conflict.). The topic will be annual planning and adult staffing. See Church Map (Entry #4 cut off on bottom of map.)
2. Friday, July 15th Membership Kickoff beginning at 7:00 pm at St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Packs and Troops welcome. Food served.
3. Sunday, July 17th is the 50th Anniversary Celebration for Camp Ransburg.
Centennial Celebration for Troop 18
Save the date: Troop 18 will be celebrating its 100 Years of Eagles on August 27 & 28, 2016.
They have been researching their troop’s history and Eagles. We will post more about their history in the coming weeks.
For right now, Scoutmaster Steve Bye shares just a few tidbits.
In 1916, Troop 18 had the first three Eagle Scouts of the Indianapolis Council (later merged into the Crossroads of America Council).
- Hall Marmon
- Noble Butler
- G. Vance Smith.
Jaccos Towne Lodge History, page 10.
Also in 1916, Edson T. Wood Jr. earns bronze honor medal for saving a lady from drowning (Boys Life, 1916).
Employment Opportunities with Council
Reaching for Tomorrow, a Learning for Life Program, is looking for part time Program Leaders to deliver basic life skills and character education modules in elementary, Jr. High and High school classrooms in the following towns: Indianapolis and eight surrounding counties, Noblesville/Arcadia, Fishers, Carmel, Westfield, Avon, Plainfield, Danville, Brownsburg, Anderson, Rushville, Richmond, Liberty, Connersville, Hagerstown, Cambridge City, Lebanon, Crawfordsville, Greenfield, Frankfort, Greenwood, Terre Haute, and Shelbyville. Interviewing will be the last week of July. You would start the position the 2nd week of August. This is a paid position and we provide flexibility to make your own schedule.
New for Fall Recruitment: Online Registration
The BSA has established a new Online Registration for adults and youth. You can see an overview video of how the system works below. The video describes it as “Coming Soon.” It is already activated in Crossroads of America Council.
This system has many advantages:
- You never run out of paper forms.
- Your applicant will be immediately notified whether data on one of the screens is incomplete, avoiding the need to circulate the form around twice to fill in missing information or signatures.
- There is no physical application that needs to be delivered or sent.
- Necessary signators traveling out of town can fulfill their obligations from anywhere in the world.
- Your applicant can pay their BSA membership dues online with a credit card.
The current weaknesses in the system are being able to find where to access the website to start.
- You must access this from the http://www.BeAScout.org.
- From the main page, the applicant needs to navigate to your unit.
- On the unit page, the applicant needs to correctly choose “Cub,” “Scout,” “Venturing,” or “Volunteering.” Picking a program puts the applicant in “Youth” status. Adults must pick the “Volunteering” choice, then select a unit.
- You can pick the links for your unit and save them for placement on your webpage or emails. This means that you can circumvent some of the problems above.
- The system does not collect your unit’s dues or added costs (like local council insurance). It merely establishes the applicant as a member of the BSA through your unit. I have even used it to promote an existing volunteer to a new position without having to pay dues again.
I have used this system successfully twice. I have not dealt with Youth Protection Training in either case because they were existing volunteers. I cannot offer much feedback on that issue yet.
Please begin using this system immediately, especially before recruiting season and rechartering. The more information that is properly registered in the system before October 1st, the smoother your rechartering will proceed.
Fall membership Kick-off
Mid-Summer and Grand Ritual
Brothers
The mystery of the neckerchief – resolved
In last week’s post, we opened the mystery of who introduced the neckerchief to scouting. The neckerchief and campaign hat or iconic emblems of Lord Baden Powell. Yet he did not invent the neckerchief.
We also discovered last week that BP came to use the neckerchief because of his friend Fred.
So who was Fred?
Using clinical research in recruiting
As the Worldwide Movement of Scouting reaches 110 years old, we need to find new ways to explain ourselves.
We all know that Robert Baden-Powell designed scouting to deal with the transition from childhood in a rural setting to an urban setting. He was not alone. At the same time many different organizations tried to duplicate the same effort. Professor Montessori, Dan Beard, Ernest Thompson Seton and many others who are less renowned in history were trying to do similar things and often corresponded with each other. Each had their own spin on what they thought needed to happen to be successful. each of the persons name above put a heavy emphasis on exposure to nature.
They did not know the mechanical reasons why returning to nature was so important for kids. They just knew from anecdotal experience and observation that it was true.
In the last 20 years, there has been an increase in research about the impact of the environment on our psychological well-being. Many times the focus is on better designing a city to reduce the stress on its inhabitants. Other times it is trying to figure out mechanically why being in nature while doing exercise is so good for psychological health. Most of the studies that I have seen of been focused on adults.
Even from this research, we can reach some conclusions about the effects of Scouting on our youth. Read the rest of this entry »
Scouting legacy
Scoutmastercg.com has a wonderful column about your Scouting Legacy. It is worth a quick read.
It is useful to keep your spirits up. Another spin is that it is a reason we need to recognize adults now. The boys often are slow to do it themselves. It may take years.
It may never occur and the adults must do it in self-reflection.
Still we are leaving a legacy.
CAC North Star Unofficial Website 
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