(can't seem to quote, so will try the best I can).

Terms.

Sorry, but using the correct terms ARE important. I've been involved with Venturing from day one, and what I and others have seen is people get confused when they here "Venture Crew" and think that a "Venture Patrol" is part of Venturing when its not (we run into Venture Patrol members wearing the green Venturing uniform, which is wrong. And we run into Venture Patrol members who think they can earn Venturing awards). National has made clear the terms to use. Let's use them.

Uniform.

No, no one said they had to purchase the pants from National. But when people see the price, they balk at getting them, and then use that to justify wearing jeans or khaki pants or the like INSTEAD of getting charcoal grey pants/shorts elsewhere. We always have to explain this to people online.

Training.

Most councils I know DO combine adults & youth training. Adults in this room doing VLST (Venturing Leader Specific Training), youth in that room doing VLSC (Venturing Leadership Skills Course). My comment was that it wasn't clear that the youth & adults do DIFFERENT training. The impression being given was they were going thru the same training.

A Cub Scout pack with 60 kids is great! But a lot of crews at 4 or 5 or 6 youth are NOT a good size. They struggle to do things (crews should be doing VLSC by themselves, but at that size can't), and too often go under because they don't recruit (too often they are little more then a private club for a group of friends). A better size is atleast a dozen, 20 or 25 or 30 would be even better. This is based on experience.

Keep in mind the default office positions (with patches) are President, VP-Program, VP-Admin, Secretary, Treasurer, Quartermaster, Crew Guide, Crew Historian. Plus activity chairs. Wouldn't it be better to have all those positions filled by different youth PLUS have others to help out?

Having quantity can help you have quality.

Uh, the thread isn't getting heated up.

I recommend getting some experience with on-line discussion so you don't mistake short and to the point comments/responses with rudeness. They aren't the same.

I recommend for those wanting to learn more about Venturing to check out some of the other on-line resources. The Venturinglist on Yahoo Groups is probably the largest and longest running such resource. A lot of very knowledgeable people are on that list. In addition to the discussions, there are a wide range of resources uploaded in the files area of that group. There are also regional Yahoo Groups as well. The Venturing discussion area at the Scouter Forum is useful, but of late that site has been having some technical difficulties. There are also Facebook groups. The National Venturing Cabinet is promoting those as a means for the youth to interact with each other. There are official groups there for Venturing nationally, and for the regions, and most areas and councils.

Ok. First off, I didn't think anyone was out of line in our conversation. It was just normal discussion, even if there is some disagreement. No one was disagreable.

Now, as to the size of Venturing Crews. AFAIK, no Council has a "method of having patrol-sized crews". Too many crews ARE about 5-6 people in size. A large number of the ones in my council are. But its a bad size. You would think a Pack with just one Den would be too small; or a Troop with just one patrol. Units like that are doomed to go under. So in Cub Scouting & Boy Scouting we recruit, recruit, recruit, to build up the units to a good size and keep those numbers up. Sadly, with Venturing we don't do a good job of recruiting. Few crews recruit, beyond just word of mouth. Few councils do any recruiting for Venturing. H*ll, it seems in my council I'm the only one doing ANY Venturing recruiting with a Venturing booth at scouting events!! Then, our overlaping ages with Troop preclude the idea of 'feeder troops' ("you're trying to steal my boys!!" etc). Many troops live or die because of feeder packs or lack thereof.

What I usually see is that a crew gets formed by a small group of friends. They get some parents to be their leaders and find a CO. Then, either because its too much work or they just don't see the crew as anything but their private little club, they don't recruit. Then, when the kids age out or go to college, the crew dies. And those adults go off and do other things. So we've lost another crew, along with some good experienced volunteers. Plus, because they are small, they many times struggle with activities, so their program isn't as good as it could be.

Now, if they had recruited and built up their numbers to a dozen or even better 20 or so. And kept up with recruiting, we'd have a crew that would be long lasting just like with troops & packs (with many times decades of existance).

Its a problem I just don't see many addressing.

If you are in a rural area with few kids, then, yes, you'll have a small crew.

But that's not true in many areas. I'm in a fairly urban council. There are tons of kids. But many crews are small because they don't recruit. You said "Every unit, whether they have 60 members or 5 should be recruiting, that's just the way it is." Very true. The problem I see is few crews do any recruiting. You ALSO need recruitment going on at the council/district levels. C/D recruiting is more along the line of raising awareness (what Venturing is, etc). Councils need to be sure they are including Venturing in their website and newsletters and the like. Units need to help out by promoting themselves, and teaming up with C/D to lead kids to them. I run a Venturing info booth at many large council events in my area. I many times get girl scouts looking for crews to join. But because crews aren't doing something as simple as creating a flyer that I can have at the booth, its hard to steer them to those crews.

The issue of creating a Venturing Crew "just cause" is also a problem. I see groups chartered as crews that don't make any use of the program (ROTC units and other such groups). Its just a numbers game for some professions. I also see Venturing Crews that are nothing more then glorfied Venture Patrols. They make no use of the program, other then wear the green shirts. My neighboring council which I also working with heavily has, on paper, a LOT of Venturing crews. But when you really look at it, few are real crews. That makes it hard for them to promote and grow the program, or have venturing events within the council.

Powder Horn. I attended that back in 2002. I later went to a Course Director Conference for it. My council is finally moving forward to having a course in 2011 and I'll be assistant course director (can't be course director, as you need to be on staff). Finding a CD has been our main problem. I wouldn't quite compare it with WB, as WB is a leadership course for all scouters, and PH is a high adventure resource course.

I don't want to brag, but I have a lot of experience in Venturing.