Reaching Underserved Youth
Welcome to my passion project! This is where we get the opportunity to change lives right now. These Scouts will be amazed by things traditional Scouts take for granted. If I was not a professional Scouters, this is what I would be doing as a volunteer.
Tidewater Scoutreach
Tidewater Council has large pockets of areas with economically challenged families with 38% of the schools being title one schools. It is difficult to impossible for them to participate in traditional Scouting programs. Previously, communities in Norfolk, Portsmouth and in rural North Carolina were scouting deserts, due to the difficulty in getting these families involved.
In 2022, after COVID restrictions were lifted, I grabbed my bag of Scout goodies and went to Lindenwood Elementary school every two weeks to conduct Cub Scout meetings. This is an economically distressed area, but the teachers and principals are eager to help their children grow.
When I ran out of activities to do with these Scouts, I brought in my wife Christa, the best den leader I know. She planned and executed a long-term program with youth recognition, field trips, and outdoor fun, making it mirror a traditional Scouting program. Our Scout Executive hired her to be a program specialist, as it grew.
We pulled together a committee to help us expand the quality and quantity. Leaders from the African American community stepped forward to involve fraternities, school board members and other key players in the community.
Our development team brought in grant money exceeding $140,000 and now the Scoutreach program serves 224 youth in 15 different schools. Most importantly, youth are doing things they would not have had access to before. These kids are hiking in the woods, walking on the beach, cooking outside, performing first aid and getting involved in positive adult interactions, which is otherwise rare for many of these Scouts.
This July, three Scouts from that first school we started our after-school program will be attending summer camp at Pipsico Scout Reservation!
"the hatchet" In school scouting program
DeSoto County, Florida is a rare rural outpost of Southwest Florida Council. It is farm and ranch land, with a large migrant population. One of its schools, Nocatee Elementary has a such a high youth turnover rate, that only one third of the kids that start at Nocatee will return the following year. Most students are children of undocumented agricultural workers. It also came to my attention that almost every child in DeSoto county is unable to swim. There are no public swimming pools, they are far from the ocean and freshwater bodies of water in that part of Florida are full of snakes and alligators. ​
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Camp Miles, one of two Southwest Florida Council camps is only 30 minutes from all three elementary schools in DeSoto county, making it the closest swimming pool to these kids. I decided to offer up our camp to the schools to use, so their kids could go swimming, which would be the first time for many.
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There is a book, on the reading list for 3rd and 4th graders in Florida called "The Hatchet". It is about a young man who is flying over Canada in a small airplane, when it crashes. He is left in the wilderness with only a Hatchet. He has to learn to survive, using outdoor skills he did not yet have. We decided to tie in our in-school Scouting program with "The Hatchet"
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Once a month our staff and volunteers would do monthly in-school outdoor skills lessons with every 4th grader in DeSoto County. We also bought every 4th grader a copy of "The Hatchet". While these kids were reading about outdoor survival, we taught them outdoor survival. At the end of the school year, we had a field day at Camp Miles for all these kids. They got to make a campfire, a survival shelter and learn first-aid. And yes, at the end of the day, they got the chance to swim in a swimming pool!