Scoutmaster Podcast 87

And now the old Scoutmaster, Editing makes us sound very intelligent. Right, there you go. It always makes me sound a lot smarter than I actually am, My son said this morning.

I told him you know what we were doing today and you know that I was a bit nervous and stuff. And he looks at me and goes: well, hey, if you mess up, at least it's not live, right, I would be, I would be dead in the water if this was a live podcast. I'll tell you. Hey, this is podcast number 87..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Greene. Let's take a look around and see who got in touch with us this past week. Here. Frank Maynard wrote in. He said: nice chat with Peter LaRue.

He said discussions like this really help put in the perspective that we are part of a worldwide movement and scouting is both different and very much the same in other parts of the world, If at all possible. I agree Every scout should have some kind of an international experience. Go over to scoutmastercgcom, find podcast number 86 with Peter LaRue. Look for Frank's comment there. He has some helpful links to some international resources, including jamboree on the air, jamboree on the internet and the Michigan camperee, Also heard from our friend Walter Underwood. Walter listened to a couple podcasts ago to have Butler and I discuss the Journey to Excellence program And he says: I really like the Journey to Excellence.

It's easier to calculate and measuring more important things. I've only got one problem with it, though: They put gold over silver.

What's next? Are you issuing all the eagle medals in gold and giving everyone a replacement gold beaver?

Here's the thing, Walter. They did talk about this and I found the answer to your question in a frequently asked questions thing about the Journey to Excellence. They did actually talk about this and they decided that the majority of volunteers, especially new volunteers, would better understand the ratings if they followed the bronze-silver-gold sequence like the Olympics.

Now you may not know, but Walter and I know because we're old-timers that have been around for ages and ages. But in scouting it goes silver is ahead of gold, right? Because if you look, for instance, you look at the old Scoutmaster patches, the old Scoutmaster patch was silver and the Assistant Scoutmaster was gold, And that's kind of the mysterious metallurgical hierarchy of scouting. Who knows, I don't know why it was that way.

I think you can rest easy, Walter. I don't think they're going to start re-issuing eagle medals or silver beavers. If they do, I want one. Michael Duff wrote from Troop 381 in Prairieville, Kansas. He says I've already asked the other members of our troop committee if they've noticed a camera and a microphone in our meetings.

The article about bullying that you published recently was so timely and helpful. We spent a considerable amount of time on that topic ourselves because of several recent incidents. Of course, our prior discussion, we covered the definition of active and reasons some Scouts aren't advancing, And these are all things that you've been talking about on your podcasts and articles. Recently, I suggested that we could shorten our committee meetings to 15 minutes or less.

If the other adults in our troop would just subscribe to your podcast, You know what I would feel like a true hero if I could reduce committee meetings down to 15 minutes apiece. That would really be something I would like to be remembered for that, if it was at all possible. Problem is, Mike, I don't think it's even remotely possible.

I went on to say: you've contributed so much to help me in our troop that I'm thinking you should be on our roster. Well, that's very nice.

Thank you so much Listening and reading to just about everything you're sending out. Thanks for all your work. Thanks for being in touch. Mike Really appreciate that. Let's see other things that have happened this past week.

Well, Google Plus, Google Plus, That's right, Google Plus. As if Twitter wasn't enough, as if Facebook wasn't enough, and having a blog and a podcast wasn't enough.

Now we're on Google Plus. If you don't know what Google Plus is, don't worry, You might not ever need to know, But if you're out there on Google Plus, look for my name, Look for Clarke Green, and we'll get you in the Scoutmaster CG Circle on Google Plus.

Well, the rest of the podcast is taken up with an interview that I conducted a week or so ago with a couple of fellows involved with Shelterbox. I'm going to let you listen and have them tell their story. If you're not familiar with Shelterbox, by the time we get to the end of your interview, you will be And you'll see why it is a wonderful connection for scouting and something that you'll want to consider adding into the program of your troop or your pack or your crew.

So I think that's going to be plenty for this podcast. Let's get started, shall we? All Time Boy Scout,

All Time Boy Scout Today on the podcast. I've got a couple of guests waiting and we're talking about Shelterbox Now, if you haven't already heard about it. Shelterbox is an international disaster relief organization that's provided shelter and life-saving equipment after natural and other disasters since its founding in the year 2000.. What Shelterbox provides is unique and it doesn't really duplicate any other established relief organizations. It's been quite effective and quite interesting. It's based in the UK and Shelterbox USA is one of 20 Shelterbox affiliates around the world.

There's also more than 50 highly trained Shelterbox response teams members based here in the United States who distribute the boxes in disaster zones and they work closely with local organizations. Last year, Shelterbox USA officially partnered with the Boy Scouts of America.

I want to welcome Mark Dwyer, who is a Shelterbox response team member, and he also heads up the program for Shelterbox USA. How are you doing today, Mark? Good morning Clark. Shelterbox also has 300 volunteer ambassadors in the United States.

Now what these ambassadors do is they make contact with different service organizations and youth groups and they explain the Shelterbox mission, and this helps build awareness of the organization and helps raise funds to supply Shelterbox. One of those ambassadors is Doug Matz.

Now you might know Doug from his blog. He's a Scoutmaster in Troop 83 in Kenilworth, New Jersey.

How are you doing today, Doug? I'm good. Thank you, Mark. Let me turn to you first. You're the guy who heads up Shelterbox USA for the scouting connection.

What's your background in scouting? You know I'm actually a lifelong scouter. I'm an Eagle Scout, My son's an Eagle Scout. I've been involved with Troop 82 here in the Chicago area for about eight years now. I've got different roles within that.

So really a lifetime of scouting. So this is a pretty natural setup for you then It is.

There's so many things between scouting and Shelterbox that are very similar: All the life skills that you learn, the leadership and the citizenship in the world- those types of skills that translate very directly to Shelterbox. Doug, you got involved with Shelterbox through a visit to the Jamboree last year. That's correct. My first exposure to Shelterbox was touring the Jamboree, the national Jamboree. My son and I went out for a weekend road trip.

I got to see the setup and remembered being extremely impressed with both the quality of gear that they were using as well as their overall mission. The fact that they could pack everything into such a small box was just anyone who's ever packed for a scout camp out. That was kind of impressive to me as well. At that point there were a lot of things to see at the Jamboree. We went on and were touring other activities. I guess it was March when the earthquake and such hit Japan that the name Shelterbox kind of came across my radar again.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Japan. It was at that point that I decided that I really need to do something more here.

As you know, Scouts is all about service to others. I wanted to step forward and set that example for my Scouts and get more involved. To me, Shelterbox was the perfect fit for that.

I think that's a pretty common experience, Doug, because we see these horrific things happen, these natural disasters and other kinds of disasters unfold around the world, and we wonder: what in the world can we do? How can we affect that?

How did you end up becoming an ambassador? The day that the earthquake in Japan was announced, I was all over the Shelterbox website like crazy.

I got in touch with the coordinator who works with all the volunteers Registered right away, said I want to be a volunteer eventually. If possible, I would like to be on the response team.

What do you need? What can I do? There was a brief interview process and we worked through some deals. Since then I've been selling the Shelterbox mission anywhere and everywhere I can.

Mark, maybe you can tell us, as a member of the response team, what are we talking about here? We're talking about a literal box of stuff, right? Right, I mean literally. Picture a large rubber-made container and in that is what most scouters would relate to as a patrol box.

It's got a 10-person tent, It's got blankets, It's got stove ground sheets, There's a toolkit so people have hammer saws, things they use to rebuild their life. There's an activity kit for the kids. It is literally everything that a group of 10 needs to live out in the field. Mark, tell me how this all got started.

Who came up with the idea and how did Shelterbox get started? Right, Shelterbox was started in the year 2000.. It was really the vision of one gentleman, a guy named Tom Henderson. He's English and it's really a simple concept. He was sitting at home watching the news one night, like we all do, and he saw after a disaster.

He saw a bunch of people huddled under a tarp and a truck pulled up and they started throwing loaves of bread Off the truck and it was raining and people were scrambling around for the food and he just said: you know, this is so wrong, Why are they living like this Kind of thought about. It went home, said: you know, if I lost my home I'd go in the garage, I'd pull out my camping equipment, we'd set it up in the backyard and we'd be fine.

So why can't we do that for people? You know did some research, got involved, started looking at it and realized nobody was doing that and really took it to his rotary club and started packing the first boxes out of his garage in the year 2000,, 2001..

And since then we've now been to more than 160 disasters in more than 70 countries. So it's really pretty amazing how much it's grown in 11 years. Wow, And this is something- the way that this kit was developed over time, I guess, was testing things. Yeah, it's evolved. I mean the equipment has evolved over the years. The tents specifically.

You know we're probably on about our sixth or seventh evolution of the tent. You know it's pretty difficult if you think about it. We're going into every potential climate in the world. We're going into every different location during all different weather conditions.

So it has to be a good, you know, four season tent. It has to hold up very well the UV rays.

So you know we're always tweaking it and improving it to that level. Our response team members in many cases live in the tents while they're in the field.

So if there's any issues, problems whatever, we're firsthand using them and coming back and working to fix those problems. So give me an idea of what a response team does and how this works.

Once it hits the ground, Sure, When there's a disaster, usually our response teams are deployed within 24 to 48 hours, So we have people standing by ready to go. They then get into that country, like I said, within 24 to 48 hours. They're doing a quick assessment of the disaster. Certain disasters we know immediately are going to be huge scale, things like Haiti or Japan- and we start shipping gear right away.

But generally, as our teams land, they're doing a quick assessment of getting up into the disaster area, seeing how bad it is and then calling for aid as it comes over. So basically, we're then shipping boxes in chartering planes, flying it into the disaster area and the response teams then shepherd that all the way through.

So they're meeting planes at the airport, making sure stuff gets through customs. In many cases, that airport that they're flying into can be hours away from the actual disaster zone, So they'll arrange transportation to move it up into the disaster area and then work with locals to distribute. We've moved boxes on tons of different ways of transport. Obviously the most common would be trucks, but we've moved them on boats, We've moved them in helicopters, We've moved them on burrows, We've even moved them on camels in the Middle East.

You've been directly involved as a relief team member in the field, have you? I have, yeah, I've been a relief team member for about three years. I've been on about seven deployments. I've been to Somaliland, which is northern Somalia.

I've been to Niger, Haiti twice, Colombia, Japan And then my latest deployment was actually into the southern United States after the tornadoes that came through Tuscaloosa and Joplin. We actually distributed aid into northwest Arkansas that was also hit by those storms.

Were scouts involved in that at all? Actually, I've been fortunate enough to work with scouts on two different deployments. Right after the Japanese tsunami, I worked with scout groups in the Tori, Japan. We had about 100 scouts come up and help set up tents.

And then in northwest Arkansas, around the towns of Altus and Denning, we had about 45 both-boy scouts and girls scouts come out and help us set up tents and equipment into those areas. It's great working with scouts in the field because they understand camping. They understand what it is. We pretty much have to show them once how to set up a tent and they get it and they jump right in and help us out. There's a pretty solid example right here in our own backyard. I'm really impressed with the practicality.

It's interesting because a lot of people just don't really think about shelter. It's critical after a disaster, depending on what the environmental conditions are, But it's also giving people some dignity too that they're not just living under a blue tarp, sleeping in the mud and on the rain, have a place to have some privacy for their family.

The other thing that's pretty amazing is we raise awareness and raise funds for it, so all of the equipment is literally funded before a disaster happens. So we have boxes of them prepared or ready to go out and when a disaster hits we can be shipping those immediately.

It's not like the disaster hit yesterday and we start raising funds or money the next couple of days We've actually already raised that money and have the equipment ready to go, so the pipeline's full and ready to keep going Folks. This does cost money and that's the one way for all of us to be involved in it. Doug, tell me a little bit about what a shelter box costs and how they get funded from the ambassador standpoint. Sure, What we do basically is we'll go around to different groups and do presentations promoting shelter box. That can be rotary clubs, It can be other civic groups. I've had the opportunity of actually giving presentations to a number of scout units.

Not every presentation- from my perspective, as a lot of them are scout targeted- is fundraising based, As some of those, like the scout ones, were not always looking for scouts to raise money, though. I have been involved in one project that did pretty phenomenally there. In some cases it's just about spreading awareness of shelter box and teaching them how their scout skills really have practicality in this type of disaster situation. Yeah, it's really something they can get their hands on, that they can understand.

Like I said before, it's just so amazingly practical. What does it cost to put a shelter box together? The going cost for a complete kit is $1,000 per box. That $1,000 covers not only the contents of the box but it also covers the storage, the transportation and logistics. As Mark said, within 48 hours we're getting those boxes on the ground. We're shipping and transportation charges.

It also covers towards getting the response team members there with the boxes, getting them in country to accompany the deployments Mark. I did a little checking up just out of curiosity about the organization itself. It's a very highly rated 501c3, and that rating is based on the fact that the money that comes in- the vast majority of the money that goes in- goes directly to the core mission of creating these boxes and getting them where they need to go. When I say vast, it's like 93% or something like that.

Correct, yeah, I mean, shelter box is really an amazing organization because of the amount of volunteers that we have involved. Everything from our response teams are volunteers. Our ambassadors are volunteers.

We have a very, very minimal staff here in the US that really just supports the volunteer effort. Generally, people want to help. Especially after a disaster where they see these images on TV. They want to know what they can do to get involved and help. We're very fortunate to have these many amount of volunteers out there willing to help us. We're very familiar with the medical teams that go out, the search and rescue teams and everything like that, but we don't often see what happens to the victims of these disasters two weeks later or three weeks later, what their lives are like and what they're doing.

Our media is very event-driven: because it's a headline news today It doesn't mean there's a follow-up further on down the line, but it doesn't stop the suffering You're basically. That's why we try and get in that very first wave of relief that comes in. In Japan, we had people on the ground within 24 hours. In Haiti, We had people on the ground within 24 hours.

Our first need when we got in to Haiti was we were actually using tents as field hospitals. Our guys on the ground determined that that was the biggest need at the moment, so they took our first tents as they were arriving and set those up and had using them not only for operating theaters but also for recovery rooms. In Haiti alone, Shelter Box provided shelter for over 300,000 people- an amazing effort for a charity that most people have never really heard of.

I guess we really don't imagine what it would be like to, you know, be on the other side of one of these events and not have a roof over your head, not have a way to provide water for your family, not have a way to cook food, not even have any of the basic tools that you take for granted every day. Right, We're on the response team. We see all that. We see people in almost a state of shock.

You know, in many cases they're just trying to account for their family members, make sure everybody's together, trying to locate other relatives, other family members. It is quite confusing. It is quite chaotic.

So you know, a place to live, a place to call your home, a place to put your things, does provide a little, a huge amount of stability to the regions during a disaster. You also mentioned the issue of dignity. Imagine 10,000 people living in an area, packed in together, literally your family, within a 10 by 10 area, and you have to do everything within that 10 by 10 area.

So you're changing your clothes, you're getting dressed, you're sleeping. You know, if you're doing that out in the open under a blue tarp, personal dignity's gone. There's no ability for you to have that dignity.

So that's a very important part of our mission is to give people that self-dignity. Doug, when you go out and speak to groups and things, what are the most common questions that you get asked? They'll ask a lot of questions. As far as what the response team responsibilities are. They'll ask about things on.

You know how they get them through customs. They will ask about, like what you touched on, whether this is actually going.

You know the fundraising is going towards boxes. How much of this is really?

You know administration and overhead. You know we can speak to that quite confidently.

You know they'll ask a lot of technical questions in fact about the actual equipment that we're deploying out into the field. So when I do my demonstrations I've got a demo kit from Shelter Box.

So if space permits we'll set up the tent. We'll let you know whoever we're presenting to do a walkthrough of the tent. They can actually see the equipment that's going out there.

And you know, probably one of the things that's most impressive is they'll see me show up with one of these green boxes and be like, oh, that's it, Where's the rest? And then it's, you know, almost like the clown car, all the things that keep coming out and coming out.

You know, literally, other than food and medicine, it's everything for an extended family of ten in one condensed box. We're all scouters here and we know that we have this kind of magpie-like reaction to shiny objects that we can take camping And it does kind of appeal to that. I mean it's a pretty impressive kit. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean it's been described a number of times almost as the ultimate patrol box, because you've got everything from your tent and shelter, you've got stoves, you've got blankets- If the environment calls for it, mosquito nets are provided, water purification tools- it could be ideal for a camp-out situation. You've got everything except your food and your firewood.

These are wood-burning stoves that are in it. There are two different models that go out.

There is one that handles basically any type of liquid fuel and then there's a separate pioneer stove model that basically anything that's solid that burns can fuel that stove for cooking. Mark, anything you wanted to add about the contents of the box. The only other thing I'd like to add is when a group does sponsor a box- a group or an individual- they can actually track that box and follow where in the world it goes. Oh, really, huh. When they send in their donation, they get another letter back saying: great, thank you for your donation, You just sponsored box number 1234..

That box now gets sent to a disaster somewhere in the world. They get another letter back saying: great, your box number 1234 just went to the flooding in Columbia or the earthquake in Haiti or the earthquake in Japan or the drought in the Horn of Africa right now.

So it's really pretty helpful to know exactly where their money went, exactly where the box they funded went. They can then go on our website. They can look at pictures that our response team members take there of basically the conditions that people are living in.

How does one become a response team member? The response team member is a pretty involved process. It took me about a year from start to finish, from the time I applied till I actually got my SRT designation, The first one being background checks, interviews.

Do you have the skills? I mean potentially we're sending people into some of the most difficult parts of the world under the worst possible conditions.

So what we're looking for is people that are very independent and can, under any conditions, keep functioning and get the job done. So there's an interview process. Then we're asked to go down to a two-day assessment weekend in the United States. Here We're currently running it down in Florida and that's basically outdoor skills.

Can you read a map? Can you read map and compass?

Can you work with the equipment? If you pass through that, then you're invited to go over to the United Kingdom where there's a nine-day training course and that's very involved. We trained with a lot of different organizations, everything from the Royal Navy to customs agents, to local police, to everything- To give you a taste of some of the experiences you might have in the field.

And then your final stage would be you'd go out as a junior response team member with a very experienced response team leader, almost as a trainee, on your first deployment- because up to that point everything you've learned has really been in a simulated situation- to really see how you react in the field and if you can still work through all the problems and issues that we have. Does the organization fund response teams into the field or is that the responsibility of the response team members? No, actually all of the training that you do as you apply to the response team, all of the training would be. The responsive cost would be the responsibility of the candidate for response team. Once you're actually a response team member, then all the costs associated with that deployment are paid for by the organization. When a group sponsors a shelter box, it really includes those three things.

It includes all the equipment in the blocks, it includes the transportation of that box and it includes the costs of the response team members to go with it and distribute that aid Sounds similar to becoming a Peace Corps volunteer. There are definitely some similarities. Obviously, Peace Corps is a much longer commitment.

Our deployments, when we go into the field, because we're really just there to distribute our aid, make sure people know how to use all the equipment. Our typical deployment for an SRT would be to be prepared to be in the field from two to six weeks. If the overall deployment goes later, then we tend to rotate teams through.

Our longest deployment was in Haiti, where we were actually there for almost six months and had the equivalent of a cargo 757 full of equipment landing every three days for almost seven months. And that's living in the country and what we're doing during that deployment is we're working with the locals. One of the issues we always face- and this is kind of the big issue we always face- is we never have enough equipment to help everybody in a disaster.

The question we get a lot is: how do you decide? How do you decide who's going to receive the aid? We tend not to. We don't want to be the westerners coming in saying, yes, your family will get one, your family will not.

We work with the locals, whether that's government officials, whether it's a group of village elders, whether it's just a committee elected by that community, and we work with them to say we want to concentrate on the most needy, the people that are most at risk of loss of life due to exposure to the elements. So that's typically women with children, elderly, handicapped, people living with severe illness. These are the people that are most vulnerable that we start with.

So we work with the communities to identify within their community who those people are and we work with them. Doug, what's the process of becoming an ambassador or shelter box ambassador? I'll interview with a representative at the US headquarters of Shelter Box in Florida. You're expected to make a commitment to the volunteers: how many presentations you can do and things like that. They're extremely supportive of the volunteers as far as getting them the right brochures and materials, things like that, for presentations. Really, once you're approved, you kind of work your own schedule.

You find opportunities anywhere that you can to do the presentations through my scouting background. That's actually where I've gotten most of my leads for presentations. Or I'll happen to meet somebody at another presentation that I'm doing and they'll invite me back to their club or their organization to do a presentation there.

So a lot of it has been word of mouth and just continually expanding the networking while I'm out there. Mark, how do I get my unit involved, my cub pack or my scout troop involved with this? The best way is to go to our website, which is wwwshelterboxusaorg, and right on the front page you'll see there's a section that says scouting section.

Click on that and that's going to take you to our young shelter box area and then within that you can click on the icon that says scouts. There's all kinds of information there. Really, what we're asking our friends in scouting to do is to build awareness in their community. Shelter box is an amazing charity that most people just haven't heard of.

So they can, of course, they can raise funds for it, but, more importantly, they can talk to their friends, their neighbors, they can hold events. They can invite us to come to their camperels or scout events or scout aramas or any of those types of events within their district and really just spread the word about it.

When people find out about shelter box, they definitely want to find out how to help, and there's lots of options on the website directed specifically at scouts and I'll make sure to have several different links in the post that contains this podcast. We'll definitely link to the information that Mark there had.

We'll link over to Doug's blog so that you can read about his experiences with shelter box. As we've been talking here, I'm thinking that there would be some really great tie-ins with an Eagle project.

Has anybody made that connection? We have our first one currently being worked on. He's actually going to finish up his project, probably in the next couple weeks.

Here he's actually trained a staff of speakers and volunteers to go out and then as groups they're going to different groups and raising awareness within their community. Potential legal scout candidates that are interested. You can contact me at the Scouts at Shelter Box USA email. I'd be happy to work with anybody out there that's interested.

So that would be one way of supporting shelter box and also helps out with Eagle projects. There's a dozen different connections here and, Doug, there's a patch too, isn't there? I guess there is. There are patches available through the shelter box USA website.

I'd say the best opportunity I've had so far is I had the privilege of working with two local troops in my council here at Patriots Path Council that wanted to do a awareness event for shelter box, also as a fundraiser, and these was two troops from the same town basically set up a emergency preparedness weekend centering around shelter box. They wanted to do it, like I said, as an awareness event but also for the community as far as emergency preparedness. They had different work stations, if you will, around the around the site where people could learn about things that they'd need to do in case of an emergency. That was a very successful event for them and for shelter box. It worked out very well. What was almost ironic about that is just a few months after that, we had a lot of local flooding in the area as far as Hurricane Irene.

So I got the opportunity to work with a lot of these scout again. They worked with as far as their presentation, their shelter box weekend thing, and a lot of them were coming up to me and they're like this was only supposed to be a drill, we're not supposed to be doing this for real.

I said, well, this is where your scout skills come in and you guys have the skills and here's where you're putting them to use. When we know that people are in need, scouts respond.

There's this visceral connection and this is one of the better ways that I've seen to make that happen, something that just has so many different tie ins. You know, along those same lines, Clark, you know it's really pretty cool to see not only scouts here in the US but also as a world scouting movement, to see some of the images of scouts around the world helping us. We've had, like I said, in Japan, came out and helped us. Scouts in Haiti, scouts in Kenya, scouts in Italy, Brazil, Guatemala that have come out during a disaster and helped us. It's really pretty neat for a kid here in the states, a scout here in the states, to then see a picture of that and say, wow, this kid in Philippines- there isn't as uniform- helping set up tents after a disaster looks just like me.

That's a pretty powerful message that says, wow, this could hit and happen anywhere in the world, like we were talking about earlier, right in our backyard. Yeah, absolutely, and you know people think sometimes of Shelterbox only being in response to the third world. We responded twice in the US, to Katrina, to the storms in the south.

This year we were in Japan. Earlier this year we've been in Price Church, New Zealand, after their earthquake.

We've been in Italy, Australia, so it really is not just a third world problem, it's really a global problem, as disasters happen anywhere. In addition to the Boy Scouts, our relationship with the Boy's Shelterbox relationship with the Boy Scouts of America, we also have formal relationships with scouting in the UK and England and we also have relationship with scouting in France and we're working with about 12 scouting programs in about 12 other countries too.

So it's really not only going to be a US movement, but it's we're hoping that scouting becomes a worldwide movement. With their involvement with Shelterbox and it just, it just makes so such good sense.

Right, you know, we can. A lot of these countries.

We now have ambassadors, scouting ambassadors in those countries. That scouting is a worldwide movement that we can call on and we know will at least help us with information. Those opportunities in the US are kind of few and far between.

It's not easy to make a real link up and there aren't that many scouts in the US that get the opportunity to attend a worldwide function like the World Scout Jamboree or something like that. This is a more visible ways of seeing scouting, world scouting, in action.

Well, listen, I want to thank the two of you for having taken the time to talk with us today. I'm excited to put this on the podcast and I know that everybody will be interested in hearing.

Well, thanks for putting this together, Clark. It's been, you know, it's been great and hopefully, you know, everybody's going to learn something. And, Doug, thanks for being an ambassador and a Scoutmaster. My pleasure with your Scoutmaster background. You've kind of helped me out as a mentor and I got the call and could do something for you. I was certainly more than happy to do so.

Thanks once again, fellas, you bet. Thanks, Doug, you're right. Music.

Hey, well, thank you for listening to this edition of the Scoutmaster podcast and here's how you can keep in touch. First of all, you can read the Scoutmaster blog at scoutmastercgcom. When you get over to the blog, you'll also see how you can subscribe to the Scoutmaster newsletter, which is a monthly digest of the Scoutmaster blog and podcast with some great scouting resources around a month music. You can subscribe to the Scoutmaster podcast on iTunes and, when you do, feel free to leave a comment or review or a rating. And you can call and leave a voicemail, comment or question at 4-8-4-7-3-4-0-0-0-2. You want to follow us.

You got all kinds of ways you can follow us. You can follow us at scoutmaster blog on Facebook, scoutmastercg on Twitter and, if you find my name, Clarke Green, on Google Plus, well, now you can follow us there too. You can email me, Clarke Green, with your comments and questions at scoutmastercg at Verizonnet. That's scoutmastercg at Verizonnet- music. That's important to remind you that the Scoutmaster blog and the Scoutmaster podcast are not official publications of the Boy Scouts of America, nor are they endorsed or sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America. Hey, it's just me and I've got a microphone and Skype.

I could talk to people and we hope to lend a hand to scout leaders while we're having a little bit of fun along the way. Music- all that remains is to hear from our founder, Sir Robert Baden Powell. Sir Robert, I highly recommend the Scoutmaster podcast.

Well, thank you, sir, good luck to you and good camping. And thank you again, sir,