SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES
There is still time to earn your 75th Anniversary Awards!!
Or if you have earned them but not submitted the paperwork yet, DO SO NOW!!!
The 75th Anniversary celebration is over at the end of 2005.
Here are some hints on how to have your unit earn the unit award. For requirements for the Cub Scout, Leader and Family Awards, do a Google search on “Cub Scouts” “75th Anniversary awards” and find the requirements. Many council posted pdf’s with the requirements. CD
75th Anniversary Unit Award
For Each Member of a Qualifying Pack
Kommissioner Karl
Complete Requirement 1 and complete 5 other activities.
- Participate in a pack, district, or council celebration commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Cub Scouting. (This could be a Blue and Gold Banquet.)
If you missed the opportunity for a Blue & Gold lay up here, start planning a 75th Anniversary Cake Bake birthday party with all the trimmings, an evening Pack family campfire for the spring with songs and skits, or ask your district or council what they are doing to celebrate the 75th and plan to help or participate in that celebration.
- Conduct an open house or recruiting event (an indoor event or help outdoors at a local park or other facility) to introduce new families to Cub Scouting and emphasize how Scouting’s values have remained constant throughout Cub Scouting’s 75-year history.
This is pretty easy with spring roundups around the corner. Offer to help your unit with the recruitment. Perhaps you can attend to talk to the parents about life from a volunteer leaders perspective. You might run a game for the boys while someone else talks to the parents. Or you might be a greeter to welcome the parents to the round up and make sure they know where the bathrooms are, get the pack information and feel welcome. If you are not having a spring round up, plan on helping during the fall round up instead.
- Take part in a parade or other community event through which your pack can promote the 75th Anniversary of Cub Scouting.
This can be as big or simple as you want it to be. Many towns have Holiday, and other special occasion parades coming up. See if your unit can march in uniform on the parade route. Have the pack make a banner celebrating the 75th anniversary and toss small candy to the kids on the parade route. If you have a community festival, ask to set up a booth that focuses on the 75 years of Cub Scouting in your community. Look for interesting ways to display the history; with old pictures – and new ones. In larger communities – you may have the same opportunities, or perhaps you can participate in a city wide event that gives you opportunities for a run/walk team with anniversary shirts – and a special mention in the program.
- Conduct a pack derby in which boys are encouraged to decorate entries with a 75th Anniversary of Cub Scouting theme.
Once again, the Pinewood, Space Derby, or Rain Gutter Regatta may be even more fun with a theme. Have boys make their cars into historical shapes from the 30s to 50s. Have a challenge to incorporate 75 into the design, either through decals, paint, or shape. You might be surprise what you see show up on derby day!!
- Using the history of Cub Scouting as the theme, conduct an outdoor campfire program.
Wow, this sounds familiar. Oh yeah, see item 1. You might see if an “old timer” will come in their old boy scout uniform and campaign hat with a walking stick and talk about Baden Powell and scouting in the “old days”. A gentleman in a neighboring council, actually has a replica of the BP uniform, and come in his regalia to campfires to relay the story of Mafeking – like it was a first hand account. There is probably some history buff you can get your hands on to do the same for you. If not, look online for Baden Powell, and you will find a wealth of short stories to share at your campfire. Teach your boys to sing Ging Gang Gooli – a song Baden Powell made up and lead at the first jamboree in 1930.
- Conduct a pack service project, such as Good Turn for America, that promotes and reinforces the concept of 75 years of Cub Scouts helping others. As a pack, contribute at least 75 hours of service.
Service projects and Good Turn for America have been covered in detail in this issue. What a great way to give back to a charter partner or community than to serve it by performing service. This once again can be as big or little as you want. Everything from a simple spring park clean up – to erecting a bridge across a stream along a trail – or painting rooms for non-profit, it is all good, done without the expectation of reward, and teaches our boys a valuable lesson.
- Work with your chartered organization to recognize Cub Scouting’s 75th Anniversary in the organization’s correspondence, newsletter, or other media.
If you charter partner does not have a newsletter, than see if you can make a special presentation to them to thank them for sponsoring you at one of there meetings. If they do, write a short article featuring the history of Cub Scouting and Cubbing in your area, and even in your charter partner. If you are not good at writing articles, then find one on the Internet, and ask if you can reprint it. Be sure and get permission before reprinting something that is not your own work.
- Prepare a photo display for your chartered organization or other community location, highlighting activities of your pack today and in years past. This may also include photos from other family members who were in Scouting.
You may want to look up old Cubmasters, and see what pictures they have in their archives. Scan these into your computer and reproduce them, or take special care to return them in pristine condition. Make a huge shadow box – or have each den make their own and make arrangements to display them at a special event, like Scout Sunday, an annual meeting, or special dinner.
- Appoint a pack historian to document pack events during the 75th Anniversary celebration. The historian may add to an existing scrapbook or history or may begin a scrapbook or other record that the pack can build on in the future.
With scrapbooking being all the rage, this may be a great way to get more parents involved in the success and operation of your pack. Ask if there are any scrapbookers in the pack. Have a special meeting for just those that scrapbook, and ask if they would like to form a historians committee. Once they say yes, you may want to get others to help them. This in turn, would teach the other boys and adults that are interested in scrapbooking to see first hand how it is done.
- At your chartered organization, local park, or other community site, plant a tree to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Cub Scouting.
Be sure to get permission before deciding on a site. You may want to plant a tree at your council camp, so that the boys can come back and visit in their scouting years to come. You might find a local city, county or state that will pay for your tree if you plant it in certain reclamation areas. This doesn’t have to be expensive, and usually a few phone calls to your local government – and a few clicks on the Internet is all it takes to make this happen. If you do this for a number of trees, this would also qualify as a pack service project that helps the pack meet requirement 6.
Also available for the qualifying Cub Scout Pack is a special Cub Scouts 75th Anniversary Award Pack Ribbon. The ribbon is shown here.
Boys' Life Reading Contest
Enter the 18th Boys' Life Reading Contest Now!
Write a one-page report titled "The Best Book I Read This Year" and enter it in the Boys' Life 2005 "Say Yes to Reading!" contest.
The book can be fiction or nonfiction. But the report has to be in your own words—500 words tops. Enter in one of these three age categories: 8 years old and younger, 9 and 10 years old, or 11 years and older.
First-place winners in each age category will receive a $100 gift certificate good for any product in the Boy Scouts Official Retail Catalog. Second-place will receive a $75 gift certificate, and third-place a $50 certificate.
Everyone who enters will get a free patch like the green one above. (The patch is a temporary insignia, so it can be worn on the Boy Scout uniform shirt. Proudly display it there or anywhere!) In coming years, you'll have the opportunity to earn the other patches.
The contest is open to all Boys' Life readers. Be sure to include your name, address, age and grade on the entry. Send your report, along with a business-size, self-addressed, stamped envelope, to:
Boys' Life Reading Contest, S306
P.O. Box 152079
Irving, TX 75015-2079
For more details go to www.boyslife.org
Entries must be postmarked by Dec. 31, 2005.
Spirit of Scouting Service Awards
Kommisioner Karl
The “Scouting…Vale la Pena” (left) and Asian American (right) Spirit of Scouting awards recognize distinguished contributions to scouting in the Hispanic and Asian-American communities respectively. Nominees are chosen for outstanding services and demonstrated involvement in developing and implementing Scouting opportunities for Hispanic-American/Latino and Asian American youth. These are similar in scope to the Whitney M. Young Award – and are approved by the National Office’s Scoutreach bureau.
Many packs and troops have opportunities to reach out to less fortunate immigrant families and bring scouting to boys that might otherwise be left behind.
If you your unit, sponsoring organization or an outstanding volunteer works hard to get these youth involved – you may go to: http://www.bsa-gyc.org/awards/distinguished_service.htm#asian
to print a nomination form and for more guidelines.
