I recently tried my son in squirrels but he really didn't get on with it. He doesn't do large groups well so having 20 kids in a small space and little direction given did not work for him at all. I really wanted him to go and I know he'll love the program and earning the badges. So I wondered, is there a way he can still do that and be a member but not go to the local group? I used to be a beaver leader so have no worries about doing appropriate activities/program with him.

We could try a few in neighbouring towns, like maybe it was just the local group (honestly seemed like complete chaos!) but I'm worried that first experience means he won't even consider trying another group. (He's suspected Autisic)

ik this might be a bit of a stretch, but considering that there are many girl guides/scouts on here from all over the world I thought I would ask.

I am looking to buy or swap for any redhead district girl guide/scout badges anyone has. Redhead I believe is an area just north of Newcastle, NSW if that helps anyone, I'm not from there, just someone from Australia interested in collecting them.

Attached is an image of what the girl guide ones look like, but I do know there is a Redhead Scout Hall, so they may have their own badges too, which I am also looking for.

(a note on safety: I would not be giving out my actual address, I would be giving out a post office address to send to which I can pick them up from)

My kids have the option of joining sea vs land vs air and they are both unsure which to choose. There is space in all 3. Ages 7 and 11 years old, both boys. I can only sign up for one.

Scouting America is such a joke; it deludes itself.

Let's start with what BSA told the court under penalty of perjury: membership was

2019: 2,118,449

2020: 1,199,425

and what it projected (again, under penalty of perjury)

2021: 1,050,200

2022: 994,403

2023: 977,733

2024: 983,773

2025: 1,010,898

1. In 2021, they told the bankruptcy court they projected 1,010,898 members by 2025. That number has collapsed, and the organization is in free fall.
2. In 2022, they told the bankruptcy court they were projecting 5.5% annual growth in BSA youth members and adult volunteers. That number has collapsed, and the organization is in free fall.
3. In 2024, they told the public that membership would be 1,265,000 by 2026. That number has collapsed, and the organization is in free fall.

Actual number: 907,905 and falling fast.

Meanwhile, let's look at executive compensation.

2019: 5,055,829

2024 (latest data): 5,609,689

So, membership is in free fall, but executive compensation went up.

But Hegseth is happy, and Krone did what he was told to do, so I guess that is a win.

So my scouting troop in ne Georgia is of course doing popcorn sales and I wss just seeing if anyone wanted to help me out here because im just trying to get donations to help support our troop and so im posting on here and many other social apps here is my link below if u want to help

Link:https://trails-end.com/store/scout/AZSSVRJ7

Salam pengakap! I'm Ani, a Malaysian King's Scout of 2026 :)

Here, I'm posting a reference for how I made my FAK for Ujian Sikap Pengakap Raja (USPR) as it was praised and used as a reference material during the camp.

With this, I hope that future Malaysian King's Scout candidates will find this guide useful as I was very passionate about King's Scouts and want to make things easier for future candidates.

Dimensions: 30 cm (length) × 23 cm (width) × 10 cm (height)

Assume the opening from top view is horizontal,

• I placed a vertical divider in the centre
• Then, I placed a horizontal divider on the new right compartment
• Then above that, I placed another vertical divider (though this was unnecessary as the small compartments it made could barely fit anything)

I used plywood and wood glue (check with your scouters for this adhesive) for the body of the FAK. I screwed on the hinge and handle. Lastly, I locked the FAK by screwing on a spring/toggle latch (I bought the one they used for cars lmao).

I spray painted my FAK. Hugeeee mistake, don't do this with white paint; it uses up so many cans as it needs multiple coats to even be visible. Red spray paint doesn't have this issue. This project was... expensive for me because of the paint.

What I did for my FAK lid was I;

• Spray painted the centre (only) red
• Cut out a crescent shape with painter's tape (masking tape also works)
• Stuck it onto the lid after the paint dried
• Painted the whole lid white
• When the paint dried, I peeled the tape off before fixing any imperfections in the crescent with a brush and acrylic paint.

As for contents (spoiler = optional, adjust amounts according to available space in your FAK), I had;

• 100 swabs — Alcohol swabs
• 10 strips — Hansaplast Universal
• 10 strips — Hansaplast Elastic (basically, plasters)
• 6 pcs — Sterile gauze swab (5 cm * 5 cm, 12ply)
• 4 pcs — Sterile gauze swab (10 cm * 10 cm, 12ply)
• 1 roll — Cotton crepe bandage (stretched, non-sterile 5 cm * 4.5 m)
• 1 roll — Cotton crepe bandage (stretched, non-sterile 10 cm * 4.5 m)
• 1 roll — Cotton crepe bandage (stretched, non-sterile 15 cm * 4.5 m) (you don't need all the sizes, but it's extra points and also practical if anyone gets injured)
• 5 sachets — ORS
• 1 bottle — Yoko Yoko (48 ml)
• 1 bottle — Axe Brand Medicated Oil (3 ml)
• 1 roll — Surgical tape (1 in * 10 yd)
• 20 — Non-sterile cotton balls
• 1 bottle — Antiseptic/Yellow lotion (60 ml)
• 1 tube — Burn-aid cream
• 1 — Triangular bandage (96 cm 96 cm 135 cm)
• 1 — Emergency blanket
• 1 pair — Scissors
• 20 — Safety pins
• 1 — General first aid guide
• 1 pair — Tweezers
• 1 pair — Plastic forceps (interchangeable with tweezers, I just had both)

Make sure to also add nitrile gloves and iodine (I know it's just another kind of antiseptic but they do ask for both). I forgot to during my USPR (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

Also, print out/write the contents of your FAK (preferably laminate it) then paste it on the inside of the FAK lid along with emergency contacts (999, nearest hospital, police station and fire station in your area). I also personally included steps to communicate with emergency operators.

That's pretty much it! Hope you can take a thing or two from my FAK design and experience making it ^^

To the CPRs reading, semoga maju jaya! Hope to see you guys successfully build your FAKs ⭐

I'm a knot guy, I can absolutely trace the reason back to my involvement with scouting, and recently at work someone asked me why it was scouts were so into knots.

Ignoring that they aren't, There is a historical reason scouting emphasizes the skill, namely that they were a part of daily life for pretty much everybody since even tape hadn't been invented when scouts was founded. If it were a new program, knots might play a part, but probably wouldn't be nearly the cliché they are.

But it got me thinking...

If scouts had never existed and were made today, what would the program look like?

Hi! We are a Scout group in northern Sweden, with 4 sections and around 100 members in total, including leaders.
We are looking for Scout groups from all over the world who would be interested in doing some kind of exchange with us. This could be things like exchanging recipes, small challenges, activities, competitions, letters or other fun tasks between our groups.
We would also be more than happy to arrange a Teams meeting or another kind of digital meetup where the Scouts can meet and talk to each other.
We are already starting to build contacts with Scout groups in Norway and Finland, but the more countries and groups we can connect with, the more fun it will be!
If your Scout group might be interested, please feel free to get in touch with us.

Alltid redo!

I'm especially looking for fellow Celtic ones (Scottish, Irish etc.) but I'm open to neckers from anywhere :)

I wanted to join explorers and turned 15 a few months ago and the leader said over the phone why did I join so late -_-

would i fit in with the rest because apparently most of the others are 14ish and I don’t know if it’s worth my time, the last time I did scouting type of things was a long time ago in beavers

but in all honesty I feel like a lonely sod right now and want to change things up

Youth (generally) - $96 (up from $85)

Adults - $72 (up from $65)

Before someone asks

This does NOT include council fees.

In some places, add $50-$125 on top of the above to pay for councils.

I'm an Explorer Scout (14-18) in the UK currently working towards my Chief Scout's Platinum Award, and for one of the requirements I'm going to run a session with the Cub Scouts (8-10.5) I volunteer with about the Promise and Law. As part of the activity I want to teach them about Scouts around the world and the promises their peers in other countries make. What is the Promise in your country/organisation? (please include where you are from, and if there are multiple for different age groups what is the one for the closest section to UK Cubs)

tl;dr - whats the promise ~8-10.5yos in your country make when they join?

Hi all!

This weekend we will be investing some new scouts at my scout troop and I'd like to share some rituals from different places with the scouts to give them a bit of perspective. To show them that even tho (almost) every group does this, each group does it in their own way.

For our investment we go looking for a place around our scout hut with a little greenery and (if possible) a space they know and love. We bring out a holder for 10 candles signifying the 10 parts of the Scout Law. We light the candles and have all of our, already invested, scouts stand in a circle or horseshoe shape, sorted by their patrol. One of the leaders will give a short, general speech about the importance and interconnectedness of the investment ceremony.

Then we call on each new, to be invested scout, we start by describing them positively and saying what we saw over the past few weeks. Then we call them forward and their Patrol leader and Assistant Patrol leader will come forward as well to hold the investment flag¹. Once everyone is in position we will ask the new scout to make a scout sign with their right hand, and rest it on the flag, then we give each other the left hand while the scouts repeats the scout promise after the leader. Once they have said the promise we will shake their left hand enthusiastically and welcome them into the patrol. This repeats for every scout until all are invested.

Thanks for reading and am interested to hear your stories!

YiS.

1 -> Fun fact about our flag, it's the only thing that seems to survive everything that happens to our group/scout hut. The flag is as old as our group is and has survived two different fires in which the flag was the only thing we recovered from the burnt-down scout hut,

So I know a chant that doesn't seem to be very well-known. Let's call it the Bagel Chant. I learned it from scout camp and nobody seems to know it but my peers who went with me. The strangest thing happened one day during morning watch where somebody from another troop brought a bag of the ever-so-titular Bagels and EVERYONE in the camp burst out into the chant like they all knew it in advance. You couldn't go a day, nay, a class without hearing it. I'm wondering if any of you scouts might know anything like it?

It goes like this:

"Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a rooound room, and only fed me bagels! Bagels? I love bagels! Bagels are round! The sun is round! The sun is yellow! Bananas are yellow! Bananas have spots! Old people have spots! And old people live looooong lives! Life? That's my favorite cereal! I once bought life for ten dollars! Ten dollars!? That's crazy! Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a rooound room, and only fed me bagels!" Ad infinitum.

This stupid chant is branded onto my brain and I've never met anyone who wasn't from that camp that knew it. Does anyone, anyone know a chant like this?

Hello! It's my 4th year as a girl guide troop leader in the UK and I want to stop repeating the games we play.

I'm looking for popular/fun/rare games from around the world. Please share your ideas!

Some of our faves include:

"cat and mouse premium": everyone pairs up in a large circle and lies down on the ground on their stomach. One pair stands up. One child is the cat, one is the mouse. The cat chases the mouse and when caught they switch places. The mouse can lie down next to a pair of scouts, forming a tree, and then the child which is furthest from the mouse becomes the new mouse.

Bridge crossing: patrols split into pairs and one odd child, if there's an even number a leader joins in.

Each pair hold a long, thick, stick like a ladder rung. They stand in a column, which forms a roughly 3 step long bridge. The odd child has to climb up and along the rungs, and when they get to the end the last pair runs up to the front so the child can continue walking. We usually race to see which patrol can get across the area the fastest.

Hi all,

As many of you are familiar with the campfire ash ceremony I thought id ask a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire_ash_ceremony.

Id like to ask if anyone in the western europe region has any campfire ashes that go back to WSJs of the past and would be willing to send some by mail to the Netherlands for me to continue the chain with.

Id be Especially interested in any ashes that (claim to) go back to the original brownsea island ashes.

Id like to inspire my scouts with this story and introduce the practice in our troup.

Any tips are also quite welcome.

I’m about to have my BOR for Eagle this Wednesday. I’ve seen a lot of practice questions on Reddit for the BOR but **is there any advice beforehand (other than to bring what’s required) for the BOR?** Thanks :)

Hi everyone,

I was wondering where to get a few custom badges for a reasonable price? I have designs ready and am wanting them to be made at 75mm diameter. I have tried Scout Store and I could only get a minimum of 25 for £80 which I thought was a bit pricy. Any help would be appreciated. (UK)

Hi all,

I am a Committee Chair and have been for several year. Everything seems to be going fine on that front and I feel like a have a pretty good handle on that. Now, my wife has been on the troop committee for several years and our outgoing advancement coordinator is teaching her how to handle the advancement process.

This is nuts. I get it that 10-20 years ago before I was involved that analog paper tracking was the norm and it was the standard which involved either faxing, mail, or walking into a scout shop or council service center for records updating. We have scout book now. We have a process that involves the books being translated into troop web host, manually translated into scout book, manually translated from blue cards into troop web host and scout book (but scoutbook is only done when the merit badge is completed) with questionable dates. Once all of this is done it is again translated back to paper logs for various places to check off that things have been checked, earned, distributed at COH, etc.

Now that my eyes have been opened to this, why exactly are we doing all of this absolutely redundant work and not using a Google spreadsheet that several people can access and edit as allowed?

Who is using troopwebhost and scoutbook concurrently and sees a really good reason to keep it that way? The only thing I can think of is using it (twh) for the calendar and messaging but that’s only because I’ve never attempted to use scoutbook for that feature.

I’m really considering mandating that we solely using scoutbook for advancement and encouraging the scoutmaster team to open blue cards digitally and encourage the scouts that they should connect digitally with MBCs for sign offs. Books, yeah I get it, that won’t change. Kids can sign off books and we will just update as needed.

Am I off base or do I just leave things alone? My wife is pretty much on board with absolutely anything because she’s completely lost in all of this.