The Scouting Stuff Podcast

You'll meet a lot of people at a Jamboree or a Scout Camp. Why not trade them for a memento?

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Ken and Colin talk about one of the time-honoured traditions of Scout Camps and international events (such as Jamborees): badge trading. And not just badge trading, but necker trading, and even uniform trading. Trading another Scout for a memento of your meeting, such as a badge o

Effectively leading a Scout group, at any age level, means having good communication between the leaders.

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Shout-Outs

Firstly, we'd like to give a shout-out to whomever nominated Scouting Stuff for inclusion on Podbean's list of Featured Podcasts under the Government & Organizations category. That is a curated list, and for a podcast to appear thereupon, the listeners of that podcast must nominate it for consideration. So, whoever did t

What programs are available, in Scouts Canada and Boy Scouts of America, for older youth and young adults?

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Ken, Colin, and Ted were saddened to learn that their once and former Rover Den — a cabin on Lake Wabamun in Alberta that, as members of the 59th Greenfield/Royal Gardens Rover Crew, they had come to know as their own and cherished as a special pla

How do you retain members of your Scout group? And how do you retain leaders, for that matter?

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One of the big challenges facing any Scout group is that of retaining members. What are some of the reasons that Scouts (and Cubs, and Beavers, and leaders too) will drift away from Scouting, and how can Scout groups — at all levels, from national down to the individual leaders — respond to this and keep Scouts Scouts?

(Hint: There isn't an easy fix.)

See also: 

National Scouting bodies periodically overhaul their programs and methods. How do Scout groups, and individual Scouters, respond to this?

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• How many times have we, as participants and as leaders, been faced with a change in the program (e.g. uniforms, badges, program content)?
• What is the cost of a program change?
• Most recent example: Candian Path (Scouts Canada)
• What it is: Canadian Path website
• Program Quality Standards (the measuring tool to see if you are doing it right): http://www.scou

Is it just a bad B-movie? Or is there something in it that actually reflects Scouting in some way?

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As was alluded to in Episode 3, some of us were able to go and see Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, a movie that pits — yes — Boy Scouts (it is set in the United States, after all) against zombies. We had initially expected that the movie would be little more than an appropriation of the Scouting label...but it turns out that there's actually more to it than that. If you can look past the not-family-friendly content and the zombie-killing premise, you can see in the three Boy Scout characters in the movie a lot of the same dynamics that are present in many Scout groups.

Music

Theme Song from The Walking Dead, composed by Bear McCreary

Should the Scout Uniform be worn as a Halloween costume? Also, we should have made a bigger deal out of JOTA-JOTI.

This episode is a bit more off the cuff, so here's a list of topics discussed:

• Should the Scout Uniform be work as a Halloween costume?
• The new zombie movie, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, looks...questionable. We will go see it and offer a review.
• We missed JOTA-JOTI this year! We're totally going to have to jump in on that next October.
• ScoutLink is a cool organization that maintains a permanent Scouting-focused IRC channel (several channels, really)

Why do Scouts wear uniforms? What are the essential components of a Scout uniform?

We're discussing uniforms in this episode. If you look at the etymology of the word “uniform”, it basically means “one form”; it's an outward sign of the unity of a group, of the fact that they are all there for the same purpose, to work toward the same goal(s). This is as true for a soccer team as for a Scout group, and the intent is the same; some individuality is stripped away — and differences based on ethnicity and economic standing are diminished — in order to build up group cohesion. If individuals within the group are going to distinguish themselves, it won't be by their outward appearance, but by their achievements.

MusicGalizur, by John Zorn & The Dreamers

Why do Scouts wear uniforms? What are the essential components of a Scout uniform?

We're discussing uniforms in this episode. If you look at the etymology of the word “uniform”, it basically means “one form”; it's an outward sign of the unity of a group, of the fact that they are all there for the same purpose, to work toward the same goal(s). This is as true for a soccer team as for a Scout group, and the intent is the same; some individuality is stripped away — and differences based on ethnicity and economic standing are diminished — in order to build up group cohesion. If individuals within the group are going to distinguish themselves, it won't be by their outward appearance, but by their achievements.

MusicGalizur, by John Zorn & The Dreamers

What exactly is Scouting?

In this first Scouting Stuff You Should Know podcast, Ken, Colin, and Brian examine the question of just what Scouting is. We take a look at how some of the different Scouting movements around the world define it, and also refer back to Lord Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys (which doesn't offer as concrete a definition of what Scouting itself is, although it goes into great detail about the characteristics of a Scout).

Music

Galizur, by John Zorn & The Dreamers