Action Plan for Canadian Scouting - Alan's comments

Here is my reply...

May 29, 2009

Stephen P. Kent, Chief Commissioner
Scouts Canada
skent@scouts.ca

These are my comments in response to the May 25 "Scouting Now Action Plan" Document. My intent is to be constructive while honestly expressing my views.

General Comments:

Positive:
• Re-emphasizing the use of the "Scout Method" ! This is the biggest part of what makes Scouting what it is. Too many Scout Troops have lost sight of this, or in many cases never had it presented to them.
• Democracy and giving local Members (Youth & Adult) a say in their own organisation. When Group Commissioners were first introduced in my former Area, some Area Staff were heard to say something to the effect of "We own the Group Commissioners, so they'll do what we say".
• A desire to have Useful Online Tools. The MMS when first introduced was flaky and a real headache. It is a good tool now, but it was rushed out before it was ready!

Negative:
• Far too much emphasis on the use of Paid Staff. We have too many people on payroll for the number of Members we have. Almost every penny of Registration Fees now pays for Staff salaries. They should be reduced to match enrollment. There are MANY Volunteers capable of doing Staff jobs and they have a personal vested interest in what they are doing. Some of us are Professionals in our fields, so the argument against amateur effort is invalid (see my comments below regarding Camping Instructional Videos).
• The first half of the document places far too much importance on Online Tools. This is not contradictory to my Positive comment, the key word being "Useful" Online Tools. Additional comments...
o Despite the belief that young people are very Web/Tech Savvy, I find they are rather scattershot in what they look at, and do not consistently check their eMail all the time, let alone web-postings. I get the feeling there is far too much expected of Internet Technology especially with comments like "Scouting's number one priority must be the development of effective web and new media presences".
o Any Fancy Content (Flash, inline videos, etc.) must have an alternative equivalent for low-bandwidth users. In small rural communities, even today, many families are still on low-bandwidth dial-up access. Many others even with high-speed connections, have Personal Computers that are so bogged down with self-installed background apps, adware, and even viruses, that their effective Browsing speed is the same as dial-up. Such families give up on anything but basic simple web info, or eMail.
o The Leaders and Youth Handbooks, and the Field Guide should all be freely available as PDF files. Most Youth still need the printed Handbooks, but Scouting is NOT in the business of making money by publishing, so electronic copies must be freely available to Members.


Comments on Specific Sections:

Pg.5 "you can hardly blame young people for this"
Not necessarily true, though this age group has of course learned from their Parents & Mentors.

Pg.6 "cannot assume that everyone will necessarily share these values"
Values are learned, not automatically present.

Pg.6 "not everyone is interested in camping and the outdoors.... we need to reposition ourselves and leaders in youth alternative education"
Scouting IS primarily outdoors activity, if we change that we become one of the other organizations.

Pg.6 "Some of our competitors, YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs... an example of the highly successful shift away from volunteer-driven activities to those organized by professional staff"
My experience has been that our 'professional' staff contribute very little to day-to-day Scouting activities, and it is the Volunteers along with the Youth themselves who make the programs work!

Pg.7 " other youth-serving organizations count every young person they ever come into contact with"
Which may make for artificially inflated membership numbers.

Pg.7 "We need to claw ourselves back onto the national stage"
Agreed.

Pg.7 "where paid staff and unpaid volunteers are treated as equal contributors to an organization"
Agreed, too many Paid Staff ignore Volunteers.

Pg.11 "Scouting's number one priority must be the development of effective web and new media presences"
??? Surely this is a tool to achieve real Priorities, not a #1 Priority itself ??

Pg.11 "corporate style websites just will not do. They must be technologically savvy and media-rich, with flash animation, video, and the opportunity to collaborate, share, and participate."
See my general comment on Online Tools above.

Pg.13 "they either never join in the first place or leave frustrated"
Another problem I have seen repeatedly in Scouting and a couple of other volunteer organisations is Leaders in more senior roles (Areas, Councils...) letting personal differences, and even feuds, drive out Leaders. Our Leader Training MUST emphasize fairness & objectivity more.

Pg.13 & 14 "Online training"
See my general comment on Online Tools above. Also note that online training is not equivalent to in-person.

Pg.15 "Prepared Programming" & "produced and circulated electronically"
The Leaders and Youth Handbooks, and the Field Guide should all be freely available as PDF files. Most Youth still need the printed Handbooks, but Scouting is NOT in the business of making money by publishing, so electronic copies must be freely available to Members.

Pg.17 "Resource People Database" & "Deputy Council Commissioners responsible for Program"
Better if Area Staff administered this.

Pg.17 & 18 "Making it Easier to Use Scout Camps and Properties"
Don't waste money re-inventing the wheel, this money could be MUCH better spent elsewhere. Use tools already locally created by VERY DEDICATED VOLUNTEERS. It does NOT take an army of paid people to do this. Examples....

http://scoutdocs.ca/Camps/gmaps.php
http://www.swoscouts.on.ca/campbookings1/

Pg.19 "Eliminating Leader Registration Fees"
VERY smart idea. How about also reducing Youth Fees, by reducing paid staff!

Pg.21 "Web Development" & "with new content, video, downloads, social networking opportunities, web apps"
See my general comment on Online Tools above.

Pg.21 "camping how-to videos"
Volunteers (those of us who ACTUALLY take Youth camping) are the perfect people to do this, not more paid staff ! There are Scouters in the video production business in Canada who may be willing to volunteer their time.

Pg.22 "Youth Research and Advocacy Initiative"
Again, spare the staff expense, and look at striking a Volunteer group to do this. We are the ones who actually work with the Youth.

Pg.22 "Improving the Image of the Scout Uniform"
My Troop has no problem at all with the Uniform, and alternative Activity T-Shirts. Playing around with the Uniform yet again will only annoy Parents with new costs since old Uniforms can no longer be handed down or exchanged. I do not believe that diddling about with Uniform concepts helps to recruit / retain Members.

Pg.23 & 24 Government & Media
Again, spare the staff expense, and look at striking a Volunteer group to do this.

Pg.25 to 27 "ENHANCING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY"
I like just about everything I see here!

Pg.27 "A regular schedule for updating BP&P"
Excellent ! Also, a proper notification system for when BP&P changes are implemented. Over the last few years the only way to know if BP&P has changed is to go and download a new copy - not possible for some. As a further note, it would useful to pare out some of the 'fat' in the full BP&P to make it a leaner and more usable tool, as well as a 'pocket' edition.

Pg.27 "visited at least twice per year – Service Scouters"
This would be good. Most Groups never see these folk, and thus question what they are there for.

Pg.27 "Development of a national program quality awards program for sections that includes emphasis on regular outdoor activities"
Excellent, though Pg.6 seems to contradict this.

Pg.28 to 29 "Scout Method"
Again, Excellent (with provisos below)! Many Groups have lost this. Also, on a Part II I took recently that was only passing mention. Needs emphasis & implementation!!

Pg.28 "In many countries, Scout Leaders face mandatory retirement ages of 35"
I have no idea how Scouting in these countries manages, but it is certainly illegal and an ageist insult here. Yes, we need young Leaders, but us older (I am 53) Leaders still have LOTS to offer.

Pg.29 "Youth Involvement Ratios"
a) & b) should NOT be at the expense of us older Leaders! As to C) I'm surprised any were over 18??

Pg.29 "d) Court-of-Honour"
Many Troop Leaders seem to fear this, and/or misunderstand its purpose. It is a key part of the "Scout Method".

Pg.30 "International Opportunities"
I don't know that this is really that important.

Pg.34 "Outreach Team - Cost"
Don't hire staff, use Volunteers!

Pg.36 "Alumni Development"
Yes, absolutely!!

Pg.38 "Investigation of New Group Model"
OK, but keep democracy and decision-making at the local Group level.

Please feel free to contact me.

Yours in Scouting,
Alan C. Aslett, P.Eng.
Peterborough, ON
alan@aslett.ca
2'nd Peterborough Scout Troop Leader
http://www.2ndpeterboroughscouting.ca/

An excellent post Alan! Thanks for taking the time to read and provide thoughtful comments.

Garth

Yeah, Amen Alan, I agree with a lot of what you said.

The Scouting Method, needs to come back into play.
Your comments about the books SC publishes, I agree on too.

I still can't believe they separated the Scout's handbook, into two separate books... resulting in most kids only ever getting the badge book, that tells them nothing. (or now costing our cub budget, $21 per leaping cub, because I won't give them an incomplete gift)
I can remember as a kid, reading late at night, the outdoors skills section of my Scout book with delight.
I still use that book today... (the kids love laughing at the green and black ink sketches!)

And, I have also found more on the Scouting Method, by reading the Aids to Scoutmastership and Golden Arrow, than by anything printed in the last 30 years.
The current Leader's handbook talks about a Court of Honour, and sketches it out, but really doesn't simply come out and say why you do it that way.

...and the fact is, "it just works". BP was no idiot.

The uniform - yeah, no point in wasting time on that now. We know that we lose Scouts every year to the Cadets, and they CERTAINLY DO NOT have a less formal uniform.
One of my worst dressers today, wants to join cadets in the fall... that tells me now, it's not the uniform.

The digital online stuff... well, I think that's a natural progression to support the digital natives. (anyone born before email is a digital immigrant)
And, there are many things that can be explained online, or through video. (you should have seen my wife, last August just weeks before the first cub meeting, DEPERATE to know how to do a grand howl -- thank god there was a HongKong group on Youtube, that did enough of a job we could follow well enogh to be able to fake it)

I've done a fair amount of adult IT training, and today there is a "newer" school of learning some things.
It's a bit of a "give me 4 things I can absorb and understand now, and tell me where to find the rest online later".

Tools like Wikipedia have given us instant transparent access to all facets of any topic... we should have the same.
(I did reserve Wiki-Tikki-Tavi.org, just in case we ever need it)

It's all good.
If the UK can do it, so can we.
I want a 31,000 person waiting list!

Andy

Great post Alan!

Just some quick thoughts to add...

Uniform Its not the the uniform that scares off the youth, its what it is preceived to stand for. I have yet to see any of the themed Venturer programs have trouble getting their members to wear their "Service uniforms". We have members who leave our Movement to join more structured programs and jump right into a uniform! What some youth don't like is how the rest of our society views Scouting.. "babyish", "childish", or "silly" .. Want youth to wear a uniform, then lets change the way our Country sees Scouting!

"Best before date" for Leaders... We all want to stay involved in the movement, but we have all seen the way youth respond to younger leaders! Growing old sucks! We do all do it, though! Experience and maturity are great assests, but lets keep them, perhaps a bit further back from the youth? Hard to create a program when the physical limits of the Leaders starts to hinder ideas/activities. (Ever see some of us woddling after a group of 11 year olds, shouting "Slow down and wait for me!" ..?

Training options are great! I know many love the idea of formal/long training courses but many people today just don't have time to take a full weekend(S) off to do it. Let us decide what works for ourselves..

just my two cents worth, anyways..
Mark

Some good ideas in the document, especially with respect to increasing awareness of Scouting in the public. The first 10 pages are a little fluffy though. Way too long to comment on fully, but here are some thoughts (ordered by the topics in the document).

Lots of talk of using staff and hiring staff, but no talk of firing staff. We need to reduce expenses, not increase them. Maybe bankruptcy protection would be an idea as that might allow us to shed off future pension costs. Have pensions been cut from existing staff? I saw reference recent to professional development for staff, that should be cut. These are luxuries for large well funded companies.

Don't agree with Flash on websites. I find them much slower and more cumbersome to use. But maybe it is a case of form before function for the kids.

Young leaders can often relate to the kids better. Our best leader from that perspective is our youngest. So attracting young leaders would be really good. But as we will be getting kicked out at 35, I guess I had better throw in the towel now.

Online training would be good for the mundane stuff like rules and regulations. Person-to-person is still better for program and ceremonies. For WB I, do online first then one really good day of training. People need to come out of WB I ready to run a full program.

MMS is still a piece of crap. A co-op student could have designed a better user interface. Hint, the user interface should be task drive, not database table driven.

More prepared programming would be great. One of the hardest parts of running a section is dreaming up ideas of what to do each week. I always thought the Jumpstarts were good, though I didn't use them a lot, but more detailed versions (and longer term versions) would be even better.

Welcome package idea good.

Resource people database might work. Worth a try. Should be pre-populated with lots of resources before being announced. Otherwise people will take a look and never look again. Programs online has this problem, I looked and it was empty, so I will not bother to look again.

I following UK Scouting, and they do quite a few things good, but they are not perfect. Don't get caught up in thinking there is a need to turn camps into adventure centres. That is what they did in the UK. The result is that it is very expensive to use their camps. Kids get a lot more benefit , and fun, out of building a cool pioneering structure than they do out of going up a climbing wall. Having volunteer resources willing to go to a camp to run a pioneering (or the like) activity with a troop would be more beneficial. Our current camps that are facility heavy are already too expensive for many groups to use.

The UK also run a much stronger outdoor program than we do. I would guess the vast majority of Scouts don't know how to use a compass properly, while the UK Scouts regularly send the kids off on multi-day hikes by themselves.

BSA's National Camping School does look really good. People, from Canada, who have attended give it high praise.

Eliminating leader registration fees is a gimmick. The document itself says that other fees, e.g. youth fees, would be increased to offset the loss in revenue. We don't have a revenue problem, we have an expense problem!

I'm not convinced that all the social media stuff will have any real benefit. But then, I am too old to be in Scouting anymore.

I don't see that funding research into youth issues is in anyway beneficial. Those types of report, IMHO, aren't worth the paper on which they are printed.

Uniform. Kids, Scout and up, don't like the uniform because of the image, not because it's a uniform. They all gladly wear soccer uniforms, hockey uniforms, paramedic uniforms, cadet uniforms, etc. The vast majority of teenaged boys see Scouting as "super nerds" according to one of my Venturers. We have all our kids in uniform, and yes they tuck in their shirts (though they need to be told). The whole, "kids wear what they want when with their group" has been a fiasco. A real slap in the face to the leaders. We don't offer the kids any choice on the uniform. Remember, kids are easy to get in Scouting, it's the leaders that are hard to get. You can't tell a volunteer what to do, they will just walk. Council is also very hypocritical, as they say if a kids wants to participate in any council event then they must be in full official uniform. UK Venturers will not wear their uniforms in public (one of my relatives is a leader over there). They are just as bad as our kids. Messing with the uniform will just alienate more leaders and not add any value. Changing the public image would be beneficial. The kids' peers need to be saying, "You're in Scouts? Cool, I wish I could do that".

I don't know if ScoutsAbout and ExtremeAdventure offer any real value to Scouting. Are the self funding? If they are completely self-funding, they I guess they could continue, as long as they are not diverting any attention away from real Scouting.

Agree with the intention of more democracy and transparency. Area commissioners and council commissioners should be elected by the adult membership at large. They can then appoint their team. Group chairs are elected by the group's leaders. BOG elected by adult membership at large. People running for positions should be allowed to express what they believe in and what they want to do. Currently their speech is censored such that you can't tell who might give you the results that would be best for Scouting.

More servicing would be great. Many areas don't have working service teams. Multiple visits per year to help sections would be awesome. I don't see the need to increase the ability to service in French when 99% of Scouts Canada is English (I speak French by the way, and both my kids go to a French school).

Simplified risk management guide would be good. I've said this many times, the current Camping and Outdoor Activity guide is a CYA document for Scouts Canada. It is of no value to leaders in running a risk managed program.

Getting the kids involved in leadership roles is good, that's what Scouting is about. But I question their ability to see the big picture and act in an appropriate manner. I don't think there is much value in all these youth commissioners, especially when it comes to things like having them do all the voting for the BOG, etc.

I don't see how a handful of international opportunities will help Scouting overall. Those few kids will benefit. Better to make international events, like WJ, affordable for all.

All these conferences, especially ones for the youth, are a waste of money. Have a couple of conference calls and be done with it. I hear of all sorts of travel expenses; we CAN'T afford it!

Hockey Scouting??? An interesting idea, but the implementation alludes me. Sounds like MedVents/etc; good for the kids, but it's not Scouting. Why pay Venturers and Rovers to staff a booth, it's called community service.

New group models. Repeat after me, ScoutsAbout is not Scouting. Having an option to run groups a the area level is good. Some areas have already tried that. Depending on the demographics, it may work (I haven't seen it work yet). The once a month day long meeting is worth having as an option, most people have never thought about organising it that way. The UK forcibly moved their Explorers (Venturers) from the groups to the area level. That cost them quite a few leaders. Many of the groups have an Explorer section that is official at the area level, but in reality is run at the group level. I don't see any value in the switch.


Allan.
http://www.1stmerrickville.ca

Agree with alot of it. Disagree with some. The paid staff issue always has bothered me. The purpose of the shake up is to reverse declining enrollment. This will not do it. The 35 age cut off is intersesting, but from the fact that the largest reason new leaders do not stay is the dominance/ego/unweidling ways of the over 35/long time member crowd. Fresh ideas tend to be stamped out with dogmatic tradition. That sort of 'same as we had always done it' mentality. Training doesn't help, maybe leader reassessment might? The biggest problems are the parents, and I don't think this is really address. Scouts programs have become dumping grounds for kids who do not want to be in the program. A pack of 20 kids, with 3 or 4 that don't want to be there creates untold problems for the Akela. And there is little that can be done in attempts to keep the numbers up. This also causes new leaders to leave the noise and confusion. Good Luck.

Some additional comments I have sent in based upon the July 27 update to the "Scouting Now Action Plan"...

Action Item #1:

Page 13: "We must recognize that the old idea of a leader volunteering for most of his or her life is likely a myth" - though we need to recognize and accommodate those who do make a long term committment.

Page 15: Prepared Programming - Good ideas, though the term "optional' is important to emphasize. There will be Areas and Groups that can and will interpret Prepared Programming as the ONLY right way, and will penalize Leader & Youth initiative if it deviates.

Page 18: "Cost of new provincial/Council camp websites" - Don't waste money re-inventing the wheel, this money could be MUCH better spent elsewhere. Use tools already locally created by VERY DEDICATED VOLUNTEERS. It does NOT take an army of paid people to do this. Examples...

http://scoutdocs.ca/Camps/gmaps.php
http://www.swoscouts.on.ca/campbookings1/

Action Item #2:

Page 21; Again, make good use of resources, i.e. Volunteers. The best videos would come from those Leaders & Youth actually involved in these activities.

Page 24: Advertising, Public Relations and Multi-Media Outreach - Centrally produced material is good, but leave local distribution to the Groups & Areas. I have seen examples where Staff and Councils have kept control of this, and either delivered material to the wrong audience (incorrect School Boards as an example), or far too late to be useful.

Action Item #3, 4, 5:

All good, though see my comment below on Staff vs. Volunteers.

General Comment re Web Tools:

Again I must comment that while online tools are useful, many cannot easily access them. In small rural communities, even today, many families are still on low-bandwidth dial-up access. Many others even with high-speed connections, have Personal Computers that are so bogged down with self-installed background apps, adware, and even viruses, that their effective Browsing speed is the same as dial-up. Such families give up on anything but basic simple web info, or eMail. Alternatives need to be available.

General Comment re Staff driven vs Volunteer driven Efforts:

Our Staff costs are way too high as it is. Wherever possible experienced Volunteers should be considered. An example is Page 18 "Designating a staff person to prepare regular outdoor adventure activities and summer camp programs within their Councils and Scouts Canada camps, (rock climbing, canoeing, etc.) for every section." This can in most Councils / Areas, and SHOULD be a Volunteer!

Sea Scouts & Venturers:

There has been no mention of Sea Scouts and Venturers. These specialty Troops and Companies, though fewer in number, are often some of the strongest and most active. On newsgroup discussions I have seen some comment that they feel they do not get adequate support for their activities. There used to be a Sea Scout Manual -- I would suggest that this be either updated (Sea Scout Troops themselves would likely be happy to help with this), or a section added to the Scout Handbook.