Rhianna813
June 11th, 2008, 05:42 PM
I just signed my 4.5 year old son into Spiral Scouts. Our Circle has been around for a couple of years and is quite large. It has 5 smaller groups called Hearths and a huge waiting list to get into a Hearth.
My Hearths leader is a good friend of mine and she does an amazing job thinking of creative ideas for badges and finding local resources for the kids to learn and have fun. Visiting farms, community gardens, bakeries, making maypoles, worm composting, etc… But we’ve both noticed how flakey our group is. There are 10 kids and only about 1/3 of families show up for meetings. And apparently this takes the leader to email and call people and then call again the day before to remind them. She feels like a nag, but sometimes we need to reserve things in advance. This lack of involvement and flakiness seems so uncool to me. Especially given there is a waiting list of kids and parents who might really love to join.
The only reason I got into the group is because so many scouts didn’t come to the meeting, so she decided to add more. I am not sure if the other Hearths have this problem, but we are the largest in “numbers”.
I guess the main issue is that people are just plain flakey – and our town has some of flakiest around for sure. I get that, I’m from here. But I also think it’s because the program is very affordable. It’s only like $15 to join the organization for the whole year. Our Hearth has $ 2-5 sliding scale monthly dues, which people also flake on. I wonder if people just do not take it as seriously as they would $200 gymnastic class. Ya know?
Anyway, I am looking for ideas to help motivate people to get more involved and be more responsible. The only thing I can think of is to assign roles to them, maybe on a rotating calendar. From past experience, people are less flakey if they know they *need* to be there because their part is needed. Right now, we assign snack duty to someone but that’s about it.
Or a better way to communicate so that the leader isn’t making so many phone calls, emails, etc. We have a forum for whole Circle with subforums for each Hearth. But only a few actively use it. Would a phone tree work? Or would crucial info be lost along the way.
Another radical idea, which I can not see going over well is to have a probationary period for families before they are officially joined to the Hearth. Or some kind of inactive status if they miss too many meetings. Maybe they’d be bumped back to the waiting list.
Got ideas? I could use em. Thanks!!
Rhianna
PS: SpiralScouts is a scouting program for boys and girls age 4 – 13 or beyond. It’s Pagan oriented and kids earn badges and learn about nature, community and personal growth.
My Hearths leader is a good friend of mine and she does an amazing job thinking of creative ideas for badges and finding local resources for the kids to learn and have fun. Visiting farms, community gardens, bakeries, making maypoles, worm composting, etc… But we’ve both noticed how flakey our group is. There are 10 kids and only about 1/3 of families show up for meetings. And apparently this takes the leader to email and call people and then call again the day before to remind them. She feels like a nag, but sometimes we need to reserve things in advance. This lack of involvement and flakiness seems so uncool to me. Especially given there is a waiting list of kids and parents who might really love to join.
The only reason I got into the group is because so many scouts didn’t come to the meeting, so she decided to add more. I am not sure if the other Hearths have this problem, but we are the largest in “numbers”.
I guess the main issue is that people are just plain flakey – and our town has some of flakiest around for sure. I get that, I’m from here. But I also think it’s because the program is very affordable. It’s only like $15 to join the organization for the whole year. Our Hearth has $ 2-5 sliding scale monthly dues, which people also flake on. I wonder if people just do not take it as seriously as they would $200 gymnastic class. Ya know?
Anyway, I am looking for ideas to help motivate people to get more involved and be more responsible. The only thing I can think of is to assign roles to them, maybe on a rotating calendar. From past experience, people are less flakey if they know they *need* to be there because their part is needed. Right now, we assign snack duty to someone but that’s about it.
Or a better way to communicate so that the leader isn’t making so many phone calls, emails, etc. We have a forum for whole Circle with subforums for each Hearth. But only a few actively use it. Would a phone tree work? Or would crucial info be lost along the way.
Another radical idea, which I can not see going over well is to have a probationary period for families before they are officially joined to the Hearth. Or some kind of inactive status if they miss too many meetings. Maybe they’d be bumped back to the waiting list.
Got ideas? I could use em. Thanks!!
Rhianna
PS: SpiralScouts is a scouting program for boys and girls age 4 – 13 or beyond. It’s Pagan oriented and kids earn badges and learn about nature, community and personal growth.
