What is Venture Scouting ?
- Venturing is for young men and young women ages 14 to 20. It includes
challenging high-adventure activities, sports, and hobbies for teenagers that
teach them leadership skills, provide opportunities to teach others, and give
them an opportunity to learn and grow in a supporting, caring, and fun
environment.
Why Venturing ?
- In 1997 Outdoor Exploring had grown 71% in the last five years. Career Exploring
grew 12% in the same five years. A new division created to provide National
support and new programming to Exploring's fastest growing cluster.
- What happened to Exploring ?
- Exploring is now serviced by the Learning for Life division.
-Protect Chartered Partners.
-More closely align Exploring in school-based, work- place based environments.
-Staff and volunteers can now concentrate 100% on supporting all career
clusters.
Venturing . . . Time Well Spent
- By the time they enter their teens, young people have established their
attitudes, interests, and opinions about many of life's issues and
choices. However, they need opportunities to evaluate their beliefs, goals
and abilities.
- Specifically, teens need to test their capacity to:
- Accept and meet new challenges.
- Make independent decisions and choices.
- Make important contributions to a team effort.
- Make ethically, morally and spiritually sound decisions.
- Schools, sports, part-time jobs, religious activities, family commitments,
homework, and just taking time to "hang out" with friends result in
many teens having no time for anything else. People concerned with meeting
the needs of busy teenagers today often merge a variety of resources or develop
their own programs to accomplish their goals.
- Venturing is a new, comprehensive program developed with the needs of
teenagers in mind. It offers teens an opportunity for investing their time
in their futures. Time in the Venturing program is truly time
well spent.
- The Venturing program is unique because it utilizes extreme outdoor adventure
as the method for building character, peer-to-peer bonds, and
independence. A recent research study by Louis Harris & Associates
determined that through activities such as camping, hiking, boating, snorkeling,
and mountain climbing, a majority of Venturers receive the following benefits:
| I made new friends. |
96% |
| I had opportunities to go places and do things I had never
experienced. |
93% |
| I was encouraged to share my ideas and opinions. |
91% |
| Being a Venturer has taught me to have more self-confidence. |
89% |
| The activities in Venturing has taught me to have more
self-confidence. |
89% |
| My crew faced ethical and moral decision-making choices. |
79% |
- Another value of the Venturing program is its design for encouraging youth to
provide service to others. Most Venturers (56 percent) participate in a
service project in their community, such as cleaning up property, organizing
food and blood drives, and working with the elderly.
- The importance of service projects is three fold:
- They help meet important physical and emotional needs.
- They communicate the value and importance of other people.
- They allow young people to develop empathy with those who are in need.
- "Aloneness" is perhaps the largest factor contributing to a growing
degree of disconnectedness between teenagers and their families. One
outcome of this is a growing incidence of depression in the lives of
teens. A combination of expanded options for individual activities has led
many teens to spend significant time alone. Venturing is a catalyst for
interactions between peers with like interests and gives crew members and
parents common ground for communication.
- Source: A Louis Harris & Associates research study
titled A Year in the Life of a Cub Scout . . . Boy Scout . . . Venturer,
1998
- Venturers mention that because of the program they:
| Learned to get along with people different from
themselves. |
92% |
| Practiced skills of cooperation and teamwork. |
92% |
| Had an adult to talk with about important issues. |
91% |
| Talked with parents about things learned in the program. |
85% |
- The middle school through high school years are the last opportunity for
young people to prepare for the challenges of adulthood. For those facing
the task of providing structure and resources through which teens make their
final preparations for their adult lives. Venturing provides the very best foundation.
Whether your teens are preparing for high school or getting ready for college,
the program is flexible enough to meet their needs. Venturing is time
well spent for your youth.
-
- Learn more about how Venturing can work for your youth by contacting your
District Executive or the Catalina Council Service Center.
Summary
- Venture Crews are organized around themes. They are coed or unisex groups,
aged 14-20, led by a youth President and guided by adult Advisors. Typical
themes include the outdoors, sports, hobbies, arts, ministry, or sea scouting.
Venturing Oath
- As a Venturer, I promise to help strengthen America, to be faithful in my
religious duties, to help others, and to seek truth, fairness, and adventure in
our world.
Venturing Code
-
- As a Venturer, I believe that America 's strength lies in our trust in God
and in the courage, strength, and traditions of our people.
- I will therefore, be faithful in my religious duties and will maintain a
personal sense of honor in my own life.
- I will treasure my American heritage and will do all I can to preserve and
enrich it.
- I will recognize the dignity and worth of all humanity and will use fair
play and goodwill in my daily life.
- I will acquire the Venturing attitude that seeks the truth in all things
and adventure on the frontiers of our changing world.
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