Your local scout camp, how and why to support it thought service and patronage.
Show Notes:
- Scout Camps (Wikipedia)
Transcript:
Whether you are part of the cub, Boy Scout or venturing program your local scout camp is a great resource you should be taking advantage of.
Scout camps offer a unique opportunity to scouters. Scout camps are spaces away from the general public, providing a insulated space to run your program. Not to knock public campgrounds, but with a public space there are many more elements you need to deal with, and usually the spaces allocated are small and tightly packed with other campers.
But while camping space is the most obvious benefit to utilizing your scout camp, there are definitely more.
Depending on your camp you may have a whole host of options you can take advantage of including heated cabins, shooting sports like archery and rifle. Many camps have set up orienteering courses, nature trails, COPE courses, hiking and biking trails and geocaching.
Much of these resources are available all year round, by only printing out instructions or hand-outs from the council website, or through a small council fee with trained staff.
My local camp, Schiff Scout Reservation, has many of these items to take advantage of for both cub and boy scout age groups.
It’s an unfortunate reality, but with councils merging, many scout camps close, and one of the ways they determine what camps to close is through actual usage.
But in addition to using your local camp you can support them with service. Many camps have OA Service weekends, beaver days and other camp directed service opportunities.
Outside of structured service opportunities, you can simply talk to your local council and see what they need done, sometimes they even maintain a list for units camping on site to tackle as they see fit.
Trails need to be maintained. Signage and markers for hiking trails disappear into the wilderness. From plantings, and painting to raking, or simply doing a garbage clean up one afternoon helps your camp and frees up their limited resources to tackle more expansive projects.
Last year while out camping with my unit, we saw the fire pit had been utilized so much that instead of being level with the ground, it looked like an anthill. We borrowed some buckets and shovels and while the boys were off running their program the adults got to work and cleared the area, and rebuilt the fire pit. To this day, we look back on this as a point of pride in helping our camp.
Keeping your camp spaces with a look of being well maintained is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you do it, the next camper will be less likely to drop that candy wrapper. When booking their camping experiences units gravitate towards spaces that are cared for. But, this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together. I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was a bit on supporting your local scout camp.
