BSA News {News for Scouts}

Mother Earth News has a nice page with what they call "the 10 most useful knots". It's not as nice as the Animated Knots but still a worthwhile resource.

Slightly larger than the Altoid Survival Kit, Backwoods Home Magazine has an article about a ten day survival kit for your home, car or RV. The lists includes a grocery list of food available at your local grocery store, water purification, first aid kit, and heat sources.

Link to Article

The website http://animatedknots.com/index.php has a number of videos demonstrating how to tie various knots. The videos/animations are very clear and allow you to follow along with each step or animate the entire process (with options for slow or fast). In addition to numerous scout knots, the site has categories for boating, climbing, rescue, fishing, household, decorative knots (such as the monkey fist), and whipping and splicing. This site could be very useful for teaching knots.

In order to maintain relevance in today's society, it is important for the Scouting program and its leaders to evolve and find new ways to spread the core values of Scouting. Steve Borgerding, Scoutmaster of Troop 68 in Melrose, Minnesota, has been using an often overlooked method for reaching out to his Scouts and potential future Scouts. Troop 68's website features a number of Scouting related videos ready for download.

Boy Scout Troops 718 and 799 of Thousand Oaks, California are hosting a Monopoly Tournament to raise funds. The goal of the first annual tournament is to benefit the Ventura County Council's Endowment Fund and to create a Scholarship Fund for Disadvantaged Scouts. This scholarship fund will be used to help supplement the costs of Scouting for those in need. Visit the BSA Monopoly Tournament website for details.

I think that this fund raiser serves as a real example of the type of creative and innovative fund raising that is necessary to be successful. I can remember back to the early 90's when my troop (Troop 354) first started selling fruit. At that time, no one in the area was really doing it and we were really making a solid profit. My father and I didn't pay for week camp for a number of years because we (mainly my father) had sold enough fruit to cover our costs. A few hurricanes and the growing popularity of this fund raiser (and thus competition among non-profits) caused our profits to decrease. While we still do the fruit sale for our loyal customers, we are at the point where we need a new idea for raising troop funds; perhaps an east coast monopoly tournament might be it.

I found an article at Field & Stream online with a step-by-step guide for packing a survival kit into an Altoids can. This is a great example of recycle/reuse and will serve a scout pursuing Wilderness Survival merit badge very well. The kit includes items for fire making, fishing, water purification, signal mirror, compass, cutting tools, first aid supplies, magnifying lens, and more. Overall, I think it's a very complete kit in a very small package. Building these kits could be a very fun troop/patrol activity.

Make a Survival Kit out of an Altoids Tin (and Two More Life-Saving DIY Projects)

Since its inception, Scouting has always been about helping and serving others. From the young scout who helped William Boyce find his way in the fog to the scouts of today who are helping wherever they can, there is no arguing that Scouting has had a positive impact on both our nation's youth and our nation itself.