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

University of Scouting - Our Opportunity to Share

Tomorrow in our BSA Council the annual University of Scouting takes place.  It is a day of classes offered by dozens of scouters and attended by over 1,100 scouters. Kimberly and I have the opportunity to teach there and I always find it a lot of fun to interact with other leaders in the informal classroom environments. I always learn something too. Two of my courses are supporting Boy Scout programming (The Annual Planning Conference and the Delegating Scoutmaster).  The former is nuts and bolts, but the latter is a critical course since all too often Scoutmasters have way too much on their shoulders and learning to share and how to find help is a secret of a long and happy scoutmaster life.

On the Venturing side, Kimberly will be helping crew leaders understand what is a quality crew using the Journey to Excellence award process.  In addition, she will tie Excellence in Council Venturing to Excellence in Crews through the council Venturing Officer Association.

I will offer a third course on Mentoring.  I have taught it just three times (counting this Saturday) and I was surprised as hit hung out there on my slideshare account that it had been downloaded 53 times and viewed by over 1,800 pairs of eyeballs.  Clearly there is interest in mentoring which is good since the New Roadmap for Venturing and the national roll-out scheduled for May 2014 has mentoring at the top of leadership and service and a new BSA mentoring course is being developed.

You can see our presentations and "borrow" them for your own use at http://slideshare.net/campnmug.


If you like them or if you don't let us know.

Steve and Kimberly 2/28/2014 

First post in a long time - 22 Essential Camping Diagrams from buzzfeed.com

From BuzzFeed here are 22 essential diagrams you need for camping.   Some of these are really clever.

Had to post something, it has been too long since we have posted.  Both of us have gotten more involved in Venturing beyond the crew and that has taken our time. The 2013 National Jamboree at the Summit Bechtel Reserve was fantastic. We returned happy and tired and ready for our next adventure -- Grandchildren.  Two of them: a boy in August and a girl in September.  It has been a busy fall, but our resolution is to start posting again in this new year. 

Steve and Kimberly
1/1/2014

The Osprey Transporter BSA 115 Duffel bag is HUGE!

All Packed for the 2013 National Jamboree (sort of)

Everything I want to take (sort of)

Tonight we wanted to show some Venturers going to the jamboree what we are taking to the 2013 National Jamboree to some friends.  You see in the picture the Osprey Transporter BSA  115 (reviewed or presented in our blog here) and the REI Flash 22 (reviewed here).

Let me say this clearly.  There should be no problem with anyone getting everything they need for 2 weeks in this bag.

Osprey after the two large pillows and
the REI Flash 18 (black) were removed

Looking into the pack. Everything except clothes
and electronics and the two stuff sacks you see
are Kimberly's Sleeping Bag and Pad and will not
make the trip with me. This bag is huge.

Everything I (Steve) intend to take is currently in one of these two bags (sort of).  OK, to be honest, the idea was to gather all of the non-clothing items I want to take to the Jamboree and to see how much room I had left over for clothing.  So everything that isn't clothing (and isn't electronic) that I currently intend to take to the 2013 National Jamboree is in one of the two bags that you see. 

So if there is no clothing in the transporter why is it so full? What is in the bag that counts as clothing (wearable stuff) is my rain gear, two pairs of shoes (my Merrill's and my Keen Newport H2s), a large fleece that takes up too much room, swim gear, and a few misc. things.  OK, again, if there is no other clothing such as uniform, t shirts, underwear, socks, why is it so full?  There was room for both of my large bed pillows and Kimberly's Big Agnes sleeping bag and Sleeping Pad.  Oh and I threw in the REI flash 18 in case I want a even lighter day pack.  The Flash 22 you see has 1.8 L of water in the platypus Big Zip SL and two Camelbak bottles on the side, a coffee mug and a Stanley Drip Proof Coffee Mug all inside.  In the brain are my glasses, sun glasses, headlamp notebook, pen, and Benchmade Mini Griptillian knife.


As I update this posting I will detail what is in the duffel and provide links where I can.

See you at the Jamboree
Steve Myers (SM Troop B326)

A Venturing Celebration by Hundreds of Youth in the Woods of Pennsylvania

Crew 2001 at the Venturing Summit: Central Region Area 4 plays in Area 4 of the NE Region

Crew 2001 at the Medieval Festival
of the 2013 NE4AVOA Venturing Summit

Imagine 350 high school and college-aged young adults from perhaps a dozen states all converging on a patch of woods in Pennsylvania wearing chain mail and all manners of medieval dress.  What you just conjured up is a typical event for Venturing.

Everyone had fun, some did not want to leave, all wished they had more time to enjoy the fun of the Venturing Summit sponsored by the northeast region area 4 Venturing Officers Association at the Heritage Scout Reservation in Farmington, PA.( see @NE4AVOA)

Crew 2001 in the
Medieval Spirit

Our crew, Crew 2001 from Akron OH,  backpacks, camps, goes climbing, caving and other typical outdoor activities. However, the weekend of April 19-21, 2013 was truly unlike anything we had ever done.  Our planning complete and 180 miles later, 20 Venturers and their Advisors pile out of five cars and on to the grounds of the beautiful Heritage Scout Reservation of the Greater Pittsburgh Council.

BSA's Program
for young adults

After checking in at the Keystone building, we were given our "knights of Heritage" t-shirts, patches, and maps.  We were directed to our cabin, actually a five bedroom, 2 bath house with kitchen, dining room and living room, named for George Washington, and the last one on the lane. A special weekend was about to begin.

We spent the evening playing games and meeting other venturers at Pathfinder Lodge. Games of Twister, pool, ping pong, DDR, Rock Band, and so much more kept our youth laughing and playing until the building closed.  Back in our house, card games began and we quickly got comfortable and settled down for the night anxious for the next day.

Live Action Role Play
at the Venturing Summit

Our venturers then climbed, COPEd, shot pistols, threw tomahawks, did AtLatl, Archery, played video games and board games, branded leather and other things, learned to dance, LARPed, and much more.  The highlight of the day was when the youth and adults donned costumes for the Highland Games,

NE4AVOA Staff for the Venturing Summit

Canterbury Feast, and the dance and party Saturday night. Sunday morning was given to devotions and waffles.

NE Region President Luczka
& National President Readenour

We got to meet and hear from the Northeast Region Venturing President Christine Luczka and the National Venturing President Dustin Readenour.  While we would have liked to hear more about what venturing changes are coming, we heard that the Venturing Pants are redesigned and about to be released.  (If they only change the side pockets that would be fantastic.)

Crew 2001 at Venturing Summit

This was the first Area, Regional or National event that our crew have attended. As we did a thorns and roses on Sunday morning it was obvious this won't be our last.  Thanks to the staff at NE4AVOA and all the others for showing our youth what Venturing can be.  Venturing is more than just what happens in the local crew.   Everyone went home pumped.

Crew 2001 helping with
Sunday morning devotions

The camp was beautiful, the facilities outstanding, the programming was quite good, the food was the only low point.  OK April is supposed to be warm and lack snow, but it did not deter the young adults of Crew 2001 nor anyone else.  

Check out the pictures below and we may have more available for you to see later.

Most of these pictures are of Crew 2001.   



Good Scouting, Venture onward
Steve and Kimberly Myers
See us at the National Jamboree (Troop B326 and Crew F610)

Young Girls, Future Venturers

Venturing for All

Two Venturing Guides "guiding" the Pocket Crew
and celebrating a new Eagle

Update:  Our female crew guide pictured to the left has received one of the three Council Venturing Leadership Awards to be given at the council annual meeting on May 13 in part for the work she has done with these future venturers.

Second update (June 2013):  a good explanation of Frontier Girls Clubs is published in the Daily Caller. 

Venturing is typically for youth 14 to 20.  Now two Venturers guide the next generation.  In a Boy Scout troop the older scouts are Troop Guides to the younger, now older Venturing Crew Guides are working with the youngest girls who want to be in venturing, but are not yet old enough. How do you make sure the young ladies can hold their own in the outdoors against highly skilled young men?

Imagine how hard it is for a young lady to join a Venturing Crew when she knows nothing about surviving and thriving in the outdoors.  Imagine how hard is it to camp and backpack alongside young men highly skilled in those same skills.

Our Pocket Crew & Crew Guides at the Great Trail Council
Old Portage District Klondike, 2013

Venturing is for young adults in high school and college, both boys and girls. Boys get to be Boy Scouts and camp from age 11 and as they age they can join a Venturing Crew.   Boy Scouts who enter at 14 have three years of experience and can demonstrate their proficiency in outdoor scout skills at the drop of a hat.  So when girls join an Outdoor Venturing Crew like ours, they have from zero to little outdoor skill experience.  In short they are at an immediate disadvantage.  This is changing. It can change for you too if you act to support a girls program affiliated with your unit.

So how do you get the inexperienced girls, experienced?  

First, you can just dive in and start learning by doing at age 14.  This of course works and is how scouting has progressed for years, but who likes being the novice next to the Eagle Scout?  Second, you can schedule weekend first timer camp outs and run courses like backpacking 101, but what if they can't make that one or are not ready?  Third, you can approach your council course director for Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills (like Steve) and bring those Venturers who have never had the Boy Scout Outdoor Experience to the training.  Throughout a busy weekend the youth can learn a little about a lot from tenting to compasses to axes.

Venturing Crew Guiding Frontier Girls

A Venturing Leadership Position Patch.
A guide is typically older, skilled, experienced and
passionate about helping new venturers learn.

But the best we have seen is point four. One parent of two boys in our troop and crew wanted the same experience and skills for her daughter that her son's received.  The fourth way is to form a young Venturing-type crew.  Our girls (ages 8 to 13) are chartered as a Frontier Girls Club (Troop 201) precisely because their program allows the Pocket Crew to use Boy Scout and Venturing resources.  Further, the Frontier Girls actively encourage such a  partnership.

Frontier Girls FAQ:

 "8. Are Frontier Girls troops allowed to partner with Boy Scouts troops or other local scouting organizations?

"Yes. Frontier Girls is a very flexible program and we encourage interaction with other scouting programs. We will also honor badge requirements from these other programs as long as they are age appropriate. This way if you have a Boy Scout troop that you would like to work with for a particular activity, you may use the Boy Scout badge requirements for earning your badge rather than the Frontier Girls ones, making programming easier for all involved. We also

encourage Frontier Girls to be active in any local all scout activities such as community service projects or jamborees."

Venturing Crew guides with
Pocket Crew at Raccoon Creek in PA
photo by Teresa Michaels

Critical to the successful merging of the Pocket Crew into Crew 2001 is the guides appointed by their advisor upon request from the Frontier Girls leader. We even went so far to have our Chartered Organization, The First Baptist Church of Akron (Akron, OH) to be the sponsor to the Frontier Girls.  While not required by the Frontier Girls organization, this brings them into the First Baptist Family of Scouting with the same status as our three BSA units, the Cub Scout Pack 3001, Boy Scout Troop One and Venturing Crew 2001.

Can you spot the two Venturing Crew Guides to these girls in each of the pictures?  He is an Eagle Scout and past SPL of the Boy Scout Troop and current VP Administration in Crew 2001.  She is a director at the Great Trail Council summer camp, Camp Manatoc, and a past VP of Program for Crew 2001. He is active in the Order of the Arrow and attended the 2011 SummitCorp and the 2012 Shakedown at the new Summit Bechtel Reserve.  Both are popular with the girls and setting extremely important examples of what each girl should want to become.  Each of these girls wants to be in the crew and will be soon.  They chose the name pocket crew because they wanted to be in the pocket of the crew and the pocket crew is growing in numbers.  Oh how the crew will change when all of these arrive.  It's kind of exciting don't you agree?

Frontier Girls Facebook page
Venturing, BSA Facebook page

Steve and Kimberly Myers

Preparing for the 2013 National Jamboree (video)

Last night Steve met with the scouts and parents of Great Trail Council's National Jamboree Troop B326 and elected our final leaders (the Patrol Leaders, the Senior Patrol Leader was elected back in September).  Lots of preparation by the adult and youth staff was evidenced as we covered so much of what they can expect.

One highlight if the meeting was the presentation by our youth quartermaster the following video on what to bring and what will be provided at the Jamboree.  Classy editing of footage shot at the Summit Shakedown and information from the Council Jamboree Guide leads to a perfectly well done video.  Watch and enjoy.




Scouts and Scouters are limited to what they can pack in a Jamboree Edition Osprey Transporter BSA duffel and a day pack. Here is a update of the duffel (including links to the scouting magazine announcement) and ideas about what must be in your day pack.(hint -- the 10 essentials).

Stop by and introduce yourself to us at the 2013 National Jamboree in Mount Hope WV
Steve and Kimberly (Troop B326 and Crew F610)

Our 100 Liter Duffel Bag by REI and the Osprey Transporter BSA Jamboree Edition

Update:  May 23, 2013 I actually packed the bag with all I want to take and it is HUGE (see here).

Republished and upgraded (from July 2012):  For those that asked to see our 100L duffel bags.  Here is the link to REI Cargo Adventure Duffel. (That link is no longer at REI, here is a close substitute at REI)  It is huge and also convenient. Best parts: large expandable side pockets and the backpack straps zippered away on the bottom. Somewhat awkward to carry on your back, but so much easier than lugging it at your side. Highly recommended for car camping and regular travel.  We took these to the Summit Shakedown since they require one duffel and one day pack for each participant.  Additional great feature is our Lafuma chairs (see our review)fit inside since they are only 29" long.  The National Jamboree will provide a duffel to all participants.

Update:  While the REI is our personal duffel, the National Jamboree will provide one made by Osprey (see a picture of the 115L duffel here).

From blog.scoutingmagazine.org, Photos by W. Garth Dowling/BSA

Second Update: On February 7, 2013 Byran at Scouting Mag posted a link to the actual Osprey Transporter BSA 115 liter duffel. And here it is ... (size corrected -- see response from Bryan below)

From the blog: "The bag measures 27 by 18 by 12 inches (length, width, and depth). The capacity is 5,797 cubic inches, or 95 liters. There are three compartments: the main pocket, one at the top that also holds the backpack straps, and another on the flap of the main pocket."  [Response from   Bryan February 7, 2013 @ 9:15 am
Good news — I measured wrong! Bigger is better, and these are definitely 115-liter bags. Thanks for pointing that out, Steve.]  Yeah!  [But Chris on the same site posts a link to something that looks the same.  (Osprey Transport 95).  So time will tell.

We will have more comments when ours arrive. The first comment is our 29" chairs will no longer fit inside.  I know leaders can take a chair to the Jamboree now, so that is not a real problem, but a disappointment all the same. Still two more packs to hang in the closet with care. 

S&K Troop B326 and Crew F610

Area 4 Conference for Central Region BSA - What's in Store for Venturing?

Update: May 23, 2013 The Venturing program Announcement is official at the BSA Annual Meetings (see scouting.org/venturing).

On October 6, 2012 we attended the Area 4 Training Conference (Central Region, BSA) and spent time in the morning learning about recommended changes to the Venturing Program from a member of the task force recommending the changes.  Those of us in attendance got to also talk about and share the issues and challenges we each face.

Venturing will look different (probably starting in 2015) and we liked much of what we heard.  Much of the program we love will stay intact, but the recognition system seems like it will be much more ordered and easier to comprehend.  (read more after the following jump)

Post Summit Shakedown thoughts (and Photos)

Last month, July 13-17, 2012, we were lucky enough to take 8 Venturers to the Summit Bechtel Reserve.  This fabulous new high-adventure base and permanent home to the BSA National jamborees (and host of the 2019 World Scout Jamboree) is over 10,000 acres of wild wonderful West Virginia in Steve's hometown of Mount Hope.  We got an awesome peek at parts of the plans for the 2013 Jamboree and got to pay for the privilege of being test subjects for their processes and plans.  Some when as planned, some didn't, but the 2013 National Jamboree will be so much better since we were there.  With about 2,000 attendees we saw and participated in camping at subcamp C, hiking to Action Point, Adventure Valley and Garden Ground mountain.  At Action point there was canopy tours, zip lines, challenge rope courses, climbing towers, skate boarding, BMX biking and more.  At Adventure Valley at low gear and high gear there was mountain biking.  On the last day the Venturers and Scouts went whitewater rafting. We were paired with new friends from Kansas and Virginia and nightly heard from the folks at the top of the great enterprise that SBR represents.  You can see much of this in our pictures below. 

Enjoy these photos taken on our trip to SBR


Clicking on the above photos should take you to the Picasa Album.