Venturing Magazine Blog

2012-03-04T12:11:00.001-08:00

Venturing Corps of Discovery- Servant leadership forVenturing

Here is an unusual opportunity to introduce the idea ofService to Scouting and Community to your Venturing Crew. The Venturing Corps of Discovery was launched in 1999in the Central Region. It was a “pilot”program and lives on through the efforts of volunteers. There is a very nice website with informationon how and why to get this service society started in your Crew, District, orCouncil. The site can be visited at http://www.venturingcorps.com. There is also a Yahoo Groups list fordiscussion and news sharing at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corpsofdiscovery/.

There are no requirements for membership other than a statedintent to promote Venturing within Scouting and your home community. Finding opportunities for service is left upto the individual Venturing Crew or the individual Venturer. Examples of projects that have beensuccessful in the past are staffing a camporee or Klondike Derby, serving onstaff at a Powderhorn or Kodiak Trek, and making a presentation about Venturingat a District Roundtable or Council event.

The idea here is that you can use this program to introducethe concept of Servant Leadership to your Venturers in a very positive way. This is a tool for Venturing, not arecognition program. It is not intendedto be a competitor to Order or the Arrow or the Venturing Officers Association.

Check it out, and share your success stories on the Corps ofDiscovery Yahoo Groups email list!

2012-03-02T13:24:00.001-08:00

Now that the March edition of Venturing Magazine is out, Craig and I are working on cleaning up some old web business. The Venturing Corps of Discovery hasn't gotten much attention since last summer, so I just put an information sheet up on the Venturing Magazine along with links to the Corps of Discovery webpage and the Yahoo Groups Discussion list. This is a neat opportunity to introduce the concept of SERVICE to your Crew. It isn't a recognition program, its a pay-it-forward Service Society.

Check it out at www.venturingmag.org

2012-02-29T15:29:00.005-08:00

Our second edition is out and I think it is significantly more informative than our first attempt. This time we have addressed the old Exploring concept of Clusters while describing a Venturing Scuba program on the East Coast. We have an article about youth leadership and the balancing act between running it yourself and throwing your hands in the air and letting the youth do it:.

Next time we will have an article about a program to take 8th graders and grow them into prospective college students by the end of their high school years. This is an idea for an intentional, thought out program. Not everyone can or should be going to college, of course, but this is a thoguth provoking idea for parents and Venturing leaders alike.

Check out www.venturingmag.org

2012-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

Our March issue is coming soon! The feature article is about Scuba Diving in Venturing and was contributed by a very active Crew Advisor. Another article is about the "Let the Youth Do It" dilemma and how to strike a balance between adult led and youth led.

We are still looking for contributors, too. if you have an idea for an article, please let us know! If you can write the article, GREAT! if it;s just an idea, let us know anyway!!

2012-01-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

I just received an email announcing the latest edition of Central Point, the newsletter of Central Region Venturing. This is a very well done newsletter that ties together programs across the mid section of our country. It is forward looking, announcing that Area Cabinet elections are coming up, and demonstrates that Venturers are part of something bigger than just their local Crew.

I think this is a very important point, and I fear that the vast majority of Venturers and Venturing adult Leaders are unaware of the larger community we have out there. My local Council has only a handful of general interest Crews, and I daresay that most of them have little exposure to each other. The larger Council south of me has a dozen or two really active Crews, too, and if my experience is any indicator, each of them is an independent organization with little awareness of the larger Venturing world.

I don't have the solution to this problem, although Venturing Magazine may be able to increase awareness somewhat. There is an ongoing debate within professional Scouters over whether Council sponsored events detract from local unit health. The idea is that, by organizing and promoting such events as camporees, Scout Expo's, and the like, we take away from the local units' opportunity to plan and organize it's own activities. I agree that this is likely the case for Cub Scout Packs and Boy Scout Troops, but I wonder if it really applies to Venturing Crews?

I have several reasons for raising this question. The biggest is that the average Venturing Crew has less than 12 active members. That is just slightly larger than the average Den or Patrol in a larger Pack or Troop. With so few youth, it is difficult to achieve the economies of scale to have a really exciting program. Here is an example of what I mean: Locally, the Experience Music Project (EMP), a large tribute to rock and roll and other popular music, offers discounts for groups larger than 15. The group discounted price is $5. The regular admission price is $15. How difficult would it be to put together a multi-Crew event at the EMP? Pretty easy, if you had an effective way to communicate with all your local Crews. It might even mean offering the event across Council borders, something which seems to be a taboo.

My point here is that there are lots and lots of opportunities for exciting programs for groups larger than a Crew that we just don't take advantage of. Why would it be harmful to the local Crews for the local Council, or the local District, to offer one of these events annually? To me, it seems that there would be multiple benefits, including raising awareness that there are other youth and organizations in the is program called Venturing. I think that, the more we get to know each other, the stronger the community becomes.

2012-01-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

Craig and I had a telephone conversation this morning about the Kodiak Course Director's Conference (CDC). Evidently it will no longer be required of the Kodiak Guide (Course Director) in order to get approval to conduct a Kodiak Trek.   Craig indicated that he believes most, if not all Kodiak Courses will now be sponsored by Crews rather than local councils or Areas or Regions.   I hadn't really thought much about this, but two years ago rumors were flying that Crews would no longer be allowed to conduct Kodiak Courses and that only Course Directors who had attended an approved CDC would be allowed to head up Kodiak Treks. This policy would have reduced to a handful the number of treks each year, as most local councils don't really want to take on these weeklong events. So it appears that we have had another reversal in the direction of Kodiak, back out into the local units.

Originally, Kodiak was intended to be offered only to Crew officers, much like the Boy Scout program JLT which is primarily aimed at Senior Patrol leaders and their Assistants. The original Treks were attended by Venturers from all over the US who had never met each other before the Trek.   This model never really stuck, and after the first summer of Nature of Leadership Treks, most courses were filled by whole Crews that decided to atttend together.

Craig and I used to laugh about this. Our feeling was that teens would tolerate an hour or two of daily training if it was sandwiched into a great high adventure experience. Those same teens' parents would be willing to pay for a potentially expensive week of high adventure if it included some real-world leadership training. This was our philosophy and we ran a lot of kids, Crews, and adult leaders through our Treks.

I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't tell how this new direction will pan out. I had mixed feelings about requiring Course Directors to take a weekend out of their schedule to learn how to run a Kodaik Trek. This was great for people like Craig and me, who built our Crews around the central theme of hosting a Trek each year. It wasn't so good for a Crew Advisor who wanted to run a single course.

Now, over time, we will move to a model where the majority of people who run Kodiak Treks will have never even attended one.   I used to dream that the High Adventure Kodiak Trek would become to Venturing Crews what Boy Scout Camp is to Troops; an annual big adventure that everyone plans to attend where the values and merits of Venturing could be shared between geographically separated youth. A place where friendships could be formed and maintained with photos and memories posted in places like Facebook. I no longer think that dream is on the horizon for most Venturers.

2012-01-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about content for Venturing Mgazine and came up with this: The majority of local units in the Boy Scouts are chartered to churches. This is true of Venturing Crews, too. It is also true that many church chartered units are only loosely affiliated with their congregations, simply using the building as a meeting place. But what about the others? What about the nearly half of all Venturing Crews in the Western Region that are chartered to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS)?

Is there enough interest to warrant a regular feature about Venturing as a church youth group? A few years ago my Crew went to Mississippi to help with hurricane Katrina recovery. We were sponsored int his effort by our chartered aportner, a United Methodist Church, and we stayed at a facility funded by UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief. We financed the trip by auctioning off a whtiewater raft trip for adult members of our congregation.

2012-01-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

We are going to be looking far and wide for contirbutors and for material to publish in the Venturing Magazine. We received an offer today to write an article about Scuba in Venturing. I hope to make that the feature article for the March Edition. This is a subject close to my heart.

My first Explorer Post was a Scuba Post in Troy, NY in the mid 1970's. Back then we were able to buy our Scuba equipment in a big sporting goods store (Herman's World of Sporting Goods) without showing any form of certification. We took a YMCA Scuba class and then drove to Florida that summer in our red, white, and blue school bus. In the 1980's I had another Scuba Post in Seattle where we dove exclusively with dry suits in Puget Sound and Canada.

My oldest son graduated from Boy Scouts to Venturing in 1999 so the next summer we took his Crew diving at Florida SeaBase. That is another story for another time. We arrived in Orlando just as Hurricane Debby caused the closure of the Keys. Being good Scouts, we managed to have a great time and got in more diving than had we spent the week at SeaBase.

2012-01-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

Venturing Magazine is live!! Our first edition contains an article about Kodiak, a bi-monthly "Thoughts on Leadership" column, and a list of upcoming events with links to their websites.

We plan to use this blog to publish news in between our bi-monthly editions.

Joe

2012-01-06T16:43:00.000-08:00

The new year brings a rebirth of an old classic, the online Venturing Magazine! In the past, Venturing Magazine has been more of a blog than a magazine. Now, it will be issued bi-monthly with new articles, editorials, and columnists. By the time you read this, January's edition will already be online at www.venturingmag.org. Enjoy!