Want to solve a membership problem in Venturing?

The Pocket Crew, a feeder troop into Our Venturing Crew. 

Boy Scouts have feeder packs full of cub scouts, Crews sometimes have a strong link to their troop and have a ready supply of boys, but since Venturing is for young men and young women, where is the feeder group for the Venturers. Let us reintroduce the Frontier Girls, formed under our BSA Chartered Organization
A few years ago we wrote a piece on our Girl's Frontier Girls Troop and how our Venturing Crew supported them: Young Girls - Future Venturers.

This Spring two of our girls have crossed over to the Crew. Shown is one of the two girls being inducted by the Crew President as they raise their hands in the scout sign and repeat the Scout Oath and the Scout Law.

So be creative and  find something that works for your Crew, but more importantly find something that works for the younger girls in your area of influence.

	Boys	Girls
Cub Scout Aged Youth	yes	?
Boy Scout Aged Youth	yes	?
Venturing Aged Youth	yes	yes

http://frontiergirlsclubs.com/

New Venturing Awards - what might they look like?.

Update: Bryan on scouting just posted on these awards at http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2014/05/23/leave-your-feedback-on-these-venturing-award-prototypes/
Comments due May 28...

By now most everyone knows that Venturing has introduced four new awards to take the place of the Bronze, Gold, and Silver recognitions. The new awards are named Venturing, Discovery, Pathfinder and Summit. Here at the BSA National Annual Meeting, the folks at the Venturing booth were asking for feedback on some prototype awards on Thursday May 22 which I picture below.  I emphasize that these are concepts and that they have indicated that no decisions have yet been made and the awards might look completely different. For our "voting" we had three sets of patches A, B, and C and four medals to choose from. The patches were in three segments representing Venturing, Discovery and Pathfinder.  The summit award then would be a medal. 

If a medal was chosen for all four levels were chosen, they might look like the once in the picture below.

As to the voting, many expressed the desire to see more of a medal on a ribbon, especially for the Summit award.  We expressed our desire that the Summit be similar to the Silver and Eagle in that it would be a pendant on a ribbon on a bar that had the same type of clasps that the current Eagle medal has. The folks working the booth said that many had indicated something very similar and that they were certainly going to use our opinions. That is, the decision is certainly not made. Send in your comments to program.content@scouting.org this week only as a decision will be made "within 7 days."

they are under a lot of pressure to get the awards approved since this is the primary decision holding up the release of the 

• 
  

  Handbook for Venturers
• 
  

  Venturing Advisor Guidebook, and the 
• 
  

  Venturing Awards and Requirements Book

Official announcements are included in links on our Central Region Area 4 site.

Off to the BSA National Annual Meeting

Silver Antelope

Kimberly and I are heading to Nashville for the first time.  We will be staying in the Gaylord Opryland hotel with all of the other participants at the BSA National Annual Meetings. We are excited of course since this is the first time we have been to a National Annual Meeting. What got us to attend was two things. First our good friend and great scouter from the Great Trail Council and current Area 4 Membership VP, David Weyrick, is receiving the Silver Antelope

Venturing, BSA

and we are honored to be there with him for that. Secondly, the announcements of all the changes in the Venturing Program are being announced Friday Morning and we wanted to be there for that.

In the mean time I am trying to keep all of the changes posted for our Area 4 Central Region Venturing Councils at our Resources for Councils page.  Much has been released already and more will be forthcoming.  For our purposes in supporting the Area (me) and the Great Trail Council (Kimberly) we want to have a good one stop place as we try to understand and then report and train on these changes.

Here is what is on the Resources for Council page so far. I won't update the below, so check the link.

What's New in Venturing?

The Venturing Announcement will be made at the Venturing Spark Session of the BSA Annual Meeting Friday morning May 23, 2014 in Nashville, TN

Changes will be announced at 

•   http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/programupdates.aspx 

New ALPS (Adventure, Leadership, Personal Growth, Service) Program Model and Requirements

• 2014 Program Update - 
• New Award Requirements from scouting.org
• better version for printing from USScouts.org here
• note Tier II and III adventures in the requirements are defined in the Handbook for Venturers (and here is a preview)
• Here is a list of the trainings mentioned as part of the requirements in the new award structure.

Books - Drafts of books seen at the National Annual Meeting 

• Handbook for Venturers
• Venturing Advisor Guidebook
• Venturing Awards and Requirement Book

New Adult Training Materials: 

• Venturing Advisor Position - Specific Training instructor syllabus

• Crew Committee Challenge instructor syllabus
  

  
  

Here are the documents from the 2013 New Program Announcement at Scouting.org/venturing

Spread the Word: The New River Experience May 9-11, 2014

C4VOA is having a great fun event called the New River Experience for all Venturers (youth and adults included). You might want to check your Venturing registration or find a place to sign up so you can come and have a great time with us. Details? Click on the poster or shoot the QR code. cost is being determined now, but might be around $105-$110 for the Whitewater trip and about $95 for the Canopy Tour option.

Share this by hitting one of the share buttons below or by using the link in your email to your friends or on Facebook and Twitter.  

Steve