Some readers may not know that I am the president
of the board of the Iroquois Trail Council, which serves the cub scouts, boy
scouts, and explorers in eastern Niagara, Orleans, Genesee, Wyoming and Livingston
counties.
Last weekend, the council held its annual dinner at
which we celebrated the 2016 accomplishments of our scouts and the volunteers
who deliver quality programming and mentorship to them. It was nice to reflect
on such a great year and share with them the good news of what they did and who
they impacted.
That got me thinking that perhaps I should share
the same with the readers of this paper because everyone, in some way, is a
stakeholder in the Scouting movement. You or your organization might have
donated to the BSA. Your son or grandson might be a scout. You might have bought popcorn from a scout,
which helped him go to summer camp. Your community might have been impacted by
a service project or food drive. You might have even been a scout yourself at
one time and place value in what that contributed to your development.
You can rest assured that your investment, be it
monetary or emotional, in the local scouting program paid huge dividends in
2016.
This can be said with certainty because the
Iroquois Trail Council was officially recognized by the BSA as a gold level
council last year. The BSA’s Journey to Excellence system rates each unit and
council on a wide array of metrics that ensure effectiveness and sustainability
of their programs. Less than a quarter of all 272 councils nationwide achieve
the gold ranking in a given year and 2016 was the second time in 3 years we
reached the pinnacle.
The council’s gold status was based on a cumulative
effort of our small regular staff, our summer camp staff and our army of 1,000
volunteers working hard to develop tomorrow’s community leaders through
Scouting’s unique outdoors-oriented program.
Just check out these amazing numbers:
20:
That’s the percentage that fall recruitment exceeded 2015’s numbers. We
recruited an incredible number of new scouts despite the local population of
available youth having tailed off dramatically in the past few years as young people
have left WNY. Boys want to be scouts!
20:
That’s also the percentage of cub scout-aged boys in our five-county region who
are cub scouts. It’s pretty awesome to think that one out of every five boys is
a scout.
55:
That’s how many young men earned the Eagle Scout award in our council in 2016.
Each one oversaw a public service project that impacted a community or
non-profit. These scouts and their peers renovated veterans’ museums, outfitted
parks with bird houses and bat houses, and brought flag retirement boxes to
local town halls.
80:
That’s the percentage of our scouts who camped in 2016. We led all 9 councils
in upstate New York and Vermont by a wide margin…for the tenth year in a row.
Our scouts love the outdoors, which offers a stark contrast to the world we
live in which is so addicted to computers, phones, and televisions.
100:
This is the number of local organizations that host our units’ meetings. It might
be your church, fire hall, conservation club, or police headquarters.
400:
That’s how many scouts and leaders from the Mormon Church visited our beloved Camp
Dittmer in one week as a part of our new Zion’s Camp program which has made
Camp Dittmer an international destination for the Church of Latter-Day Saints
thanks to its proximity to their holy ground of Hill Cumorah in the Finger
Lakes.
2,500:
This is the number of scouts and explorers now served by our council.
20,000:
That’s how many recorded hours our scouts gave in terms of service to projects
that weren’t necessarily Eagle projects. I wouldn’t be surprised if just as
many hours went unrecorded. These scouts cleaned up the Letchworth Trail,
participated in Veterans Day ceremonies, and ran food drives.
25,000:
That’s how many pounds of food the scouts collected in those food drives. Those
12.5 tons of canned and boxed goods were then distributed to food pantries
throughout the region.
While all those numbers are pretty significant,
their impact can’t be measured. The scouting program has an incredible
transformative effect on boys and young men; the foundation of character and
maturity that it gives them puts them on the path to becoming great husbands,
fathers, and leaders -- God knows we need that in this day and age.
To learn more about what we do at the Iroquois
Trail Council, visit our website at itcbsa.org.
From the 20 February 2017 Greater Niagara Newspapers