Community Service
Service hours reporting 2015
Don’t forget to make sure that your unit has reported all of their service hours for 2015. You can report that using the link on the right column. This information will be closed out in the next week or two. Now is a good time to wrap it up.
Remember we are trying to contribute to the worldwide effort to report over a billion hours of service by 2020.
A Cub Scout is Helpful
Image Posted on Updated on
H
ere is an article submitted by John Salewicz, Ass’t Cubmaster and Bear Den Leader of Pack 105, Den 2 (Thank you!)
During Zionsville Pack 105 Fall Camporee at Spring Mill State Park, our Cub Scouts completed a service project. We worked with the Park’s Property Manager to determine their needs.We decided on a trail rehab project.
They had been very short-handed this year and have not had the time nor the manpower to do the work. During the spring and early summer months they experienced very heavy rains that washed out part of a trail they call “The Stagecoach Trail”.
This trail is a historically significant part of the area. During the settlement era, it was the life-line to the mill. The trail was was the only way in or out of the village. It was used to move goods from the village. The village supplied a growing nation with corn meal and lumber. After the park opened, this trail served as the main entrance to the park until the 1960’s.
This project required us to move a tri-axle of gravel down the trail — bucket brigade style — to fill in the numerous washed out areas. This was quite the accomplishment for these Cub Scouts and Webelos. The trail has a very steep grade
and took a lot of effort! We were able to complete this project in an 1 hour and 45 minutes. Hikers will benefit from this hard work for years to come.WAHOO SERVICE!!!
This is a great example for future story ideas. Keep them coming.
Pack 105 celebrating their successful service project.
Eagle Project Ideas
In our meetings with local community leaders, District Executive Con Sullivan and District Commissioner Jeff Heck ran into the Nora Alliance.
The Nora Alliance is a neighborhood advocacy group in Nora. They are looking for ways to enhance the Nora Community. Increased pedestrian space, parkway like enhancement, improvements to the Monon trail.
They want to make the Monon a more park-like environment, especially in the more sun exposed section from 86th St to 96th St.
As part of that goal, we discussed whether Eagle Scouts could do improvements along the Monon. Maybe each section of 40-50 yards could have improvements of slightly different character and elements, while being part of a larger theme. That way each Life Scout could give it his own twist, while making the larger project coherent.
The idea is still in the works, but there is the potential for at least 6-12 Eagle Projects in that area. This might take some adult coordination on themes and procedures to make the politics a bit more manageable for the Life Scouts. Still, in this vision, each Life Scout would have to observe the theme and general rules, while being responsible for the blue prints preparation and approval of his own section. Then he would be responsible for the time and materials to make his blue print spring to life.
We would like feedback on whether this idea has merits and how we could make it work.
Service Project Opportunity
Heather Brownell of the Heart & Soul Clinic in Westfield, Indiana has contacted volunteer organizations with the following plea for help:
The Heart and Soul Clinic is desperately in need of a group or organization to pull some weeds and cut back some bushes. Depending on the number of individuals that help, I am guessing this should only take at most 2 hours.
Heather can be contacted at (317) 804-5782. I am not going to post her direct email on the internet, but the information email for the clinic posted on their website is info@heartandsoulclinic.org.
Thank you to Troop 56’s Bill Cherry for this lead on an article.
How Many Service Hours by Scouts worldwide by 2020?
At Earth Day 2015, World Organization of Scouting Movement’s president Scott Teare promised 1,000,000,000 hours of service by scouts.
Crossroads of America Council and Del-Mi District and National Executive Staff Director of Sustainability John Stewart undertook the challenge on behalf of BSA.
What part is your unit playing?
How do we know? You need to report your unit’s service hours and designate Messenger of Peace as benefitting organization.
Service Hours Reporting to Council
UPDATE 7/21/15: In July BSA open direct access to this reporting from within my.scouting.org. Now there are two ways to access the national database: my.scouting.org and servicehours.scouting.org. There is one way to access the local database, described below.
Like any business, Crossroads of America Council wants to be able to understand what is happening in its territory. Since the Council cannot have a person at every Pack, Troop, or Crew activity, Council seeks to learn what is happening by asking its units to report their various activities. We are all familiar with recharter reports, JTE reports, advancement reports and summer camp reports.
What we are not as familiar with is Service Hours Reports.
Council seeks to learn information about unit service hours for many reasons. One is to be able to better market scouting in our Central Indiana territory. When scouting was in its infancy, newspapers such as the Indianapolis Star ran reports about the activities of Boy Scout Troops all over the Indianapolis area. For nearly 20 years, these newspapers ran a column entitled, “Star’s Column for Boy Scouts.” It was the blog of its day.
During World War I and the Liberty Bond Drive, reports about the troops’ bond sales and other service activities took greater prominence in the columns.
In addition the newspapers general News Department would run stand-alone stories about the scout troops service to others.
Today, newspapers do not spend any time running regular columns about scouting. There are too many competing youth organization that would want equal time.
The current generation needs to rely on newer technology than a newspaper beat reporter to get the word out about what the scouts are doing every day.
We troop leaders need to be our own newspaper reporters. We need to gather information about the story. We need to write reports. We need to publish the reports. We need to make sure our reports get into the hands of prospective scouting families.
Service hours are an important part of Journey to Excellence reporting, which will be required with this year’s Rechartering.
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