Steve Kent's Opening Speech to Leadership Summit Oct. 2 2009

The presentation videos have been uploaded to You Tube.
http://www.youtube.com/scoutfocus

The post event interview is not yet finished being edited.

Garth

Being told to either step up or step aside, I decided to stand-down and focus on my so called year-off with apple day and popcorn and the parades, investitures, etc (I thought I was getting my 2-hours of week back, so to speak), anyways after watching Pres. Obama’s speech to Westpoint grads about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, I felt compelled to carry-on the search. Yes, those grads were clapping for him even though some would probably die in combat. But that is another story…. I watched the Commish’s speeches via the internet…were we clapping for the death of an institution???....

Anyway, onto positive thoughts. What struck me as missing from all of this (and I may have missed this too), was that there was not a lot of mention about parents. There was mention of kids and leader recruitment and retention, but there did not seem to be anything about ‘working on the parents’ for retention of the youth. I asked one of my parents why his son was not coming to weekend events, and I was told that Cubs fit the Wednesday night this year. Hockey and basketball took the weekends. This would be his only year in Cubs anyway. OK, so much for developing a long-term plan here. Generally, Cubs and Scout programs have that ‘three-year’ development plan. So, while the youth is completely enjoying Cubs, the parent will move him to something else. The best programming in the world would not prevent this. And, maybe this may be the key – selling the program to the parents, and selling it to them in three-year pieces. How many 1st year Cub aged children come to their parents and tell them they want to play hockey, or basketball or soccer or karate, etc… I would gather only a small percentage. Engaging the parents at the Beaver or early Cub stage about the extent and consistency of the programming may provide the positive element needed.

The danger here is the numbers. Even though the numbers are ‘up’ (due to interesting accounting practices – another story), the commanded increase in membership will just stretch the leadership and dilute the programs. Don’t necessarily ask parents to join Scouting as a leader, but join scouting as a parent (to help their youth along). Parent, while not leaders, can provide a wide ranging benefit to any program if they were asked to get involved with their youth’s development. Sometimes the strength of a group comes from the Group Committee which is made up by leaders and parents, ideally.

I agree with you BalooTwo. We need to make our program as simple as possible for the parents. We have made a concerted effort this year to do that with our Cub Pack. A couple of examples. We had a meeting with the parents before the program started and shared our expectations...

[*] what parents should expect from us
[*] what we expect from our Cubs
[*] what we expect from the parents

We also eliminated dues collection at the beginning of meetings. The overwhelming feedback at the parent meeting was that this was a high stress inducing event. Now we do it at the start of the year in one lump sum.

We also changed how we communicate via e-mail. We created a web site based on a Blog platform where we can have both static content (e.g. info on Camp, program plan, etc), as well as regular communication that normally would go in an e-mail. Parents get a short e-mail notice when the web site gets updated. This in response to the feedback that parents like to get e-mails but more often than not, lose them after receiving them. This way, they get the best of both worlds.

An area where we need to improve is to reduce the cost of participation. Specifically, the cost of the personal equipment required for cold weather camps can climb very quickly. We need to brainstorm here on how we can do that.

An area where we need to improve is to reduce the cost of participation. Specifically, the cost of the personal equipment required for cold weather camps can climb very quickly. We need to brainstorm here on how we can do that.

If you have a local military base, sometimes they will let you borrow winter sleeping bags.


Allan.

military bases are good, if you are near one.

dlincourt. do all that BUT, about 1/4 of the parents do not have email/internet access. This has never been a sure method of communication. See other threads on this. The dues part is worked into part of the program. the beavers exchange their dues to get a stick to feed the beaver (something like that), the six's and PL's are responible for dues collection -it is their job, part of their responsibility as a lead person.

I was not referring to making it easier for parents, there are ways for this, I was specifcially stating that parents should be more involved not less. All the focus has been on increased membership, popcorn and the commish's speeches. I think parents have it too easy - the stop and drop types. If you get them in the door, see what is going on, learn about the year, and longer, see the benefit, then you have retention, parent help and potentially new leaders. It could all start at the group Committee. If you make it too easy for the parents, and remove them from the 'scouting way of life', it is all to easy to move their youth around from different programs that are offered. At a scout challenge night, handed a stop-and-drop parent an axe before they could leave to ask him to make kindling for the challenge. he now has been to a camp and plans to help out at the next challenge night. Although 'give a parent an axe' may not be the best slogan for scouts.

Here in Halifax, there is plenty of DND to go around. While you are right about equipment loans, the key is to have the right network to get it.

We are fortunate in that the dad of one of our Cubs is a ship captain... next week we are visiting her.

We are also fortunate that all of our parents are on the Internet and have e-mails. We know because we asked.

As BalooTwo said, good emails are not sufficient. Making things easy is not sufficient either. It's also getting information to them in a timely manner... not the night before an event. All of this fosters trust and shows that we have our proverbial things together. But... it's a start. It shows the (very busy) parents we care about their time and the effort they make to have their (already very busy) children in our program.

One of the expectation we set for our parents is around pickup at the end of the evening. There would be no sprint to a parked car on the curb for our Cubs. Parents are asked to come in. On top of being safer, it creates an environment where the Leadership team can talk to the parents. An environment where we can praise our Cubs in front of the parents.

This year, our parents are much more engaged than last year - is it enough... certainly not.

I beleive in crawl, walk, run. We are just about to steady ourselves on the coffee table.