Section 6 - Electronic Advancement Reporting

I got my son involved in scouts in September of 2025.

It was the best choice for his path in life.

I am striving to get him involved in the community, find new friends, learn new skills, open new doors for him.

He had started going off the rails and taking a path that was going to end him somewhere bleak and unproductive- I'll say that. He was constantly suspended from school and making bad friend choices.

Whenever things go good for him, he gets his recognition and dopamine for doing something good.

Whenever things go bad for him, he tells me about how he didn't even want to join and I MADE him join. Which, yes... I did. But it has opened more doors for us as a family than any family counseling ever could. We have friends, we do things together. We struggle and we rise.

We went to summer camp. He was put in PATH as a first year.

He ended up raging on the third full day, took his whole tent down and put everything together to go home. Said I'm ready, let's go. I never agreed to go home, and genuinely if we DID just quit and go home I'd only reinforce the negative behaviors I've been working on correcting for literal years. He is 14 now, has struggles in school and family.

I whole heartedly believe scouting is the best thing in his life right now, though sometimes he cannot see it. He takes stabs at me when things don't go his way. And I cried. I cried at summer camp. I shut myself in my tent. He had his fit. Came back and decided he was going to stay so he can go fishing.

I guess he's not going to get very many merit badges this year. Told him to tough it out so he can go further next summer. But for now he's doing his own thing and we'll see where it goes, idk.

I'm not even sure where I'm going with this post. I'm just very sad today. Scouting community is some of the most supportive people I've ever met. And I've been crying a lot... and there is still two more nights left. It was the lack of freedom with PATH and he didn't do enough of the things he wanted to do that got him to breaking point. It's a great program in my opinion.

Edit- we are in individual counseling, and had family counseling several times over the past several years.

Just got everything submitted to be an Assistant Scoutmaster and I’ll be joining my 6th grader to Camp Meriweather in August! We are both super excited. We’ve been to camp McLoughlin before but a BSA camp will be new to us. I’ve heard other leaders say that the scouts largely manage themselves during camp. My son is still pretty young and although he is responsible I am curious how much of the camping experience is truly self guided with an 11 year old? Should I expect to be helping him out quite a bit or is it expected that he be managing himself and his own affairs as developmentally appropriate? Thanks in advance.

what are your troops requirements to be SPL? Rank, age, training, past attendance, time in the troop?

What are the expectations? Once elected?

I'm an exiting member (was treasurer for 5 years, now the DL for the AOL's) of a Cub Scout pack. For the majority of the time i've been with the unit our CO - a veterans organization - has been completely hands off. No help financially, no help with recruiting, meeting space etc. The parent group was ok with this relationship as it gave us the autonomy to build and foster the pack into one of the healthiest and largest groups in the district while building a community of like minded parents. We are constantly called out for our events, recruiting efforts, and ratio of adult leaders/scouts at council events as an example to strive for.

In the last few months our council has been pushing COR's to be more involved, and while I agree with that in theory, our particular COE and COR are trying to fundamentally change the culture of our unit. They are in a very real sense "back seat driving" our decisions. Neither of them have youth in the program, and neither of them attend events. Our current Cubmaster went 6months without ever meeting the COR.

My question is: with this misalignment of our community values - and i'm honestly not trying to assign more value to either party - how does a parent group go about removing a Chartered Org? How do we protect the savings we have in the bank and our unit number? I wish absolutely no i'll will on our CO, and maybe they will find a unit they'd like to sponsor who more closely enjoys their view on scouting, but it just isn't our group. If they continue to push we will begin to see parents/scouts drop away from not only our group, but from scouting as a whole.

My buddy passed away last year and it’s coming up on the one year anniversary. Scouring was very big in his life. He’s an Eagle Scout, OA brotherhood member, and his son is in the program now on his way to the national jamboree. When he passed he asked that some of his ashes be placed at one of the camps he went to as a scout and then later helped revitalize when it was almost shut down. My question is do we just go up and do it? Do we ask the camp master? Contact the council that’s part of the camp? Is this even allowed? Thanks for any input you have.

TL;DR Buddy died wants ashes placed at camp. How would I go about doing this??

Hello! In 2023 I did not have the opportunity to go to Jambo but I did see that there was a light blue, purple, and grey scarf/neckerchief for women in scouting. I have been looking for it since but I think they got rid of most of that stuff w the DEI changes. Does anyone have one they are willing to part with and sell? Thanks!

Sincerely,
A proud women in scouting

Hi so we experienced an issue with scoutbook plus. Our advancement chair said she tried to enter a badge for a blue card. The councilor had written a date sign off for one item that was done before the blue card was made. And a kid can work on anything before a badge is started as long as it's allowed and doesn't need approval first.

The advancement chair wants a pre dated blue card made to make it look like the badge was approved before work was started. As it's the only way she can figure out scoutbook to accept it.

So what is the proper dating method. Should a blue card be pre dated to the first item a scout accomplished or should it be dated when the Merritt badge councilor reviews it for the first time.

So a question on Reddit prompted two or five folks to go out and try to build a solution, because we’re scouters and that’s what we do:) I’ve updated Where2Camp to include summer camp search, and I’ve gotten approximately 212 validated camps, although there are multiple camps on one reservation in some cases. Just go to where2camp.com, click on the summer camps link in the top menu and give it a shot and tell me all the things I did wrong.

The goal is that you can search by must have merit badges, special programs, dining options, sessions, camp location, including distance from location.

I’ve also updated the main search so that you can search for any camp from a given location and if you’re in the map view for now, you can even search by council. (I need to make dinner so I need to add that to the other searches later.:)

Depending on the information I’ve had at hand, camp details for summer camps and other camps may include site level campsite and facility, locations, merit badges, special programs and the other summer camp features, as well as review reviews. I’m gonna start contacting camping directors to see if I can get at least on the mailing list for announcements for the 27 leader guides right now with rare exception. The session information is for this year because it doesn’t exist for 27 yet.:)

Let me know what you hate. Please let me know if you find something you like and I hope it’s helpful.

I have been recently researching about temporary patches and awards such as the 50 miler, mile swim, and white water rafting, and noticed that there are no set locations for those awards. I know they are classed as temporary patches, so one can be worn on the right pocket. After doing more research, I heard you can also put them on the back of the merit badge sash. I have never seen this, but is this allowed/fine to do? Does the same go with the totin and firem'n chit? If I have many awards I would like to show them off, so is that a good place to do so?

Our troop routinely has a recruitment type table at two festivals each year. I'm looking for ideas on interactive games or other ways to pull 11-17 years towards our table.

But there's a caveat- these are also fundraisers for our scouts. They are paid by the organizer to handle all the garbage for the day. So, they will be patrolling around most of the day leaving the tent and table to be tended by the adult leadership.

No idea is a bad idea!

I've got an application in for summer 2027 (conservation roles as my top picks) and my fiancée is thinking about applying too. She's got no Scouting or backcountry background, so she'd be looking at base camp roles — trading post, dining hall, registration, that kind of thing.

For anyone who worked a season as a couple (married or engaged):

1. How did housing shake out? I know the application says married housing is "very limited" — did you end up in separate tent cities, or were you able to get placed together? Did being engaged vs. married matter?

2. Did you coordinate with staffing beforehand, or just both apply and sort it out after hiring? Anything you'd do differently?

3. How was the experience overall for the non-Scouting partner? Did they enjoy the season or feel out of place?

Already emailed Philstaff with questions, but I'd love to hear from people who actually lived it. Thanks in advance.

Just curious if that died - I see references to it on the national site - but - nothing recent, and no announcement that it has been discontinued that I can find. Thanks!

Earlier this week, someone was talking about how hard it is to find summer camps. I had to agree. If you don't know it exists already, there are not very many ways to find them. So, I figured I'd give build it a go. I've been a web dev for 25 years and I figured between that and ai tools, we could sort this pretty quickly. It turns out to be a much trickier problem than I expected. With more than 200 councils and zero standardization, a lot of the work comes down to having to review each council's custom websites individually. I currently have just over 100 summer camps on the list. I'm sure there are a lot left.

This is far from complete, but I figure I might as well toss it back at you all, and get some feedback. I've definitely found some inaccuracies, but it's a work in progress.

Note: this is a hobby project to help the community. I am in no way looking to make this a "product" or business, just something make life easier for all us scouters.

Let me know what you think.

Edit 1: Thanks folks. With your help I'm up from 104 to 170 camps.

Edit 2: Now up to 417 camps. Thanks everyone. It's been a productive day.

Edit 3: Up to 478 camps and counting.

Can anybody weigh in here on the differences other than price? Whitsett is nearly $200 cheaper, but its a further drive and doesnt have quite as much program to offer. Insights?

This year we did Emerald Bay (amazing!) and we did Chawanakee last year.

Does anyone use this subreddit? I just got on, and it looks like the last post was 3 years ago!

Is this an actual thing? A cousin of mine, also a Scouter and veteran, sent this to me. He saw it at his council store. They told him it is to help fund the free registration for active military scouters. I have seen nothing about it in my council and a cursory Google search doesn't show me anything. I guess this is new new maybe?

QUICK UPDATE

I got a reply from someone that is one of my district commissioners. She said she has heard about this and that the Council shop this picture was taken at is a National shop (Cradle of Liberty) so they tend to get the promotional materials before the rest of us do (I'm Washington Crossing Council). It is apparently part of the agreement that Scouting America made with the DOD that goes along with the new military merit badge that is coming out. Scouters who served/serving get the knot, kids earn the badge.

Anyone have a good webpage or something so I can make sure my uniform is ready to go before my Eagle SMC

My young scout crossed over to troop in March, and I'm trying to finish putting all of his cub scout belt loops etc together. Does anyone know how to find my scout's adventures from cub scouts now that he is a full troop member? I have been digging, and except for his AOL badge, it's like cub scouts never happened.

Posted here because I'm wrestling SB+ from the Troop side

Any recommendations on where to get some custom patches?

We got a flat on the way to camp and I’d like to get a Tire Change patch of something for two of the older scouts that changed the tire for us.

I don't understand the constant hand wringing about "losing" older scouts. The goal of scouting is not to make Eagle Scout. The Eagle Scout award should be a rare thing preserved for the few kids that really choose to take ownership of the program and get really involved.

If there is a "rank goal" in scouting for all kids, it should be First Class. When a kid gets to First Class, congrats, they have successfully completed the main scouting program. If they want to then quit the program and pursue other interests, good for them. I wish them the best. If they want to continue having fun with adventures and camping in the Scouting America program, that's great too! I encourage the family to consider Venturing or Sea Scouts. Both are excellent programs for youth that want to grow the skills they learned in TFC.

But for the 10-20% of youth that want to help teach and mentor younger scouts, the First Class to Life ranks are for them. And they really can dig their teeth into the BSA program and help out and mentor younger kids and help them get to First Class. That's a very rewarding experience. And for those that are especially invested into the program, they should be encouraged to complete their Eagle.

But the belief that every kid that enters the BSA Scout program should be expected to get their Eagle Scout for their college resume should end. If that's the kid's (or more likely the kid's parent's) primary goal, then they should consider being involved in NHS instead.

</end unpopular opinion rant>

Share your experiences, and discoveries! Safe travels!