Little bits of progress

In the last couple of weeks Pack 29 has made some progress on the path to restarting.  First is I have a few parents coming over from a different pack and bringing their kids with them.  There is another pack in town that has been struggling and the Cub Master recently decided that he was not going to continue as Cub Master.  There was no one else that wanted to be Cub Master so a good portion if not all of the families are coming over.  My intention was not to have another pack dissolve, but I am glad that I am here to keep these families in scouting.  Also I held a recruitment event last weekend at local Runnings.  This place was amazing, they closed off a section of their vestibule for us and said we can have as much room as we need.  Another big plus is the lady that helped me organize is a Committee Chairman for a pack in a neighboring town.  It is important to find a location that is accommodating and want to have you there.

For the event I decided to bring our Pinewood Derby track, I figured this will get the attention of any kid that walks by.  There was not a lot of foot traffic that was in our target demographic.  I will say that out of the 15 boys that walked by 3 already belong to packs in other towns.  4 of them where too young by a year and a handful of parents we could not get to stop for the kids to race cars.  At the end of the day we did not get anyone to sign up, but we did get 4 parents that gave us solid commitments.  I know there is a big difference between signing up and someone saying they will, but I honestly feel that these 4 parents will follow through.  One of them I am extremely excited about, he is a former scouter and District Chairman.  He has seen the other packs in town, but was not motivated to join.  After talking for 5 minutes he said he is revitalized and can't wait to help out with the pack.  

I know nothing is official yet, but it looks like Pack 29 is going to have about 10 boys this fall.  It is not my target of 25, but it is a good start.  I still plan on holding one more public recruiting event in August and one for a local youth group.  Hopefully between those to events I can get a few more kids. I also have signed up to be part of a street festival that drew 1,000 kids last fall.  This event will be in October but it is never too late in the year to recruit. 

The best part about only having 10 boys is that it gives me a year to learn before I have to start managing a bigger pack.  After the year starts my biggest idea is to push the recruiter patch and hopefully get the boys excited to earn the patch.  I feel that once we show the boys how much fun Cub Scouts is they will ask their friends to join and earn a patch.  

Sorry about the lack of pictures, but we forgot the camera.

Pack 29's first recruitment event.

Just some of my patches from the last 25 years

Today Pack 29 had our first real recruitment event.  It was at the Canandaigua in Bloom festival, on Main Street and we expected a big turnout.  My wife and I had been working on crafts and games that would draw in kids hoping to set ourselves apart from all the other groups there.  My father and I showed up to the site and started setting up our area.  We had a 20'x10' canopy and a couple of tables.  From there we set up the portable Pine Wood Derby track we have.  I also displayed a Cub Scout and Boy Scout Uniform.  Finally we set up out paper airplane range, we made a launcher and a target for the planes.

My youth uniform and a Cub Scout Uniform we have

Now that we had everything set up it was time to wait for the kids to show up.  Unfortunately the crowds did not come, past events on Main Street have brought in huge crowds, but this one did not.  We did ask every kid no matter what age if they wanted to race Pine Wood Derby cars and that brought them in.  Most of the people we talked to are from out of town and already scouts, it is great to see but not too helpful for us.  We did reach out to some kids that are going into kindergarden and talked to their parents.  These people are interested and are now on our email list and are going to keep in touch.  I did talk to one parent that said he will sign his son up for the pack, but not until after summer soccer is over.  It is not a number but it is a start.

Don't mind my terrible job cutting

The portable track

While we did not recruit an entire pack full of kids we created interest for ourselves and created connections with parents.  Some other positives from this event, the local news paper is going to do an article about the rebirth of Pack 29 and we are being asked back to other events on for the City of Canandaigua since we had such a great presentation and had the most interesting area.  Also we have been given the contact information for a local youth group that has a lot of Cub Scout age boys.