What Cub Scouting Means to Me.

Some of the best things about Cub Scouting are the activities the boys get to do, and the adult leaders get to watch in awe: camping, hiking, racing model cars, going on field trips, fishing, archery and BB gun shooting, making new friends, or doing projects that help their hometown and the people who live there. Cub Scouting means "doing."

As a worldwide brotherhood of both male and female, Scouting is unique. It is based on the principles of serving others, of human dignity and the rights of individuals, and of recognizing the obligation of members to develop and use their potential. It becomes a contagious locomotion dedicated to bringing out the best in people. Cub Scouting doesn't emphasize winning as an end result, but rather the far more demanding task of doing one's best. This can be achieve by focusing the Scouts on the principal of always beating their yesterday’s best.

When Scouting can help nurture courage and kindness and allow boys to play, to laugh, to develop their imaginations, and to express their feelings, then we will have helped them grow. When Scouting can help replace a computer game remote control with a fishing pole, a piece of wood to be carved into a race car, a hammer to stake down a tent, a tree branch to be carved into a bow shaft, then we have helped them to be more creative, physically and physiologically stronger. We want boys to become useful and stable individuals who are aware of their own potential. Helping a boy to learn the value of his own worth is the greatest gift we can give him.

With all the negative influences in today's society, Scouting provides our son with a positive peer group who can encourage him in all the right ways. Carefully selected leaders provide good role models and a group setting where values are taught and help to reinforce positive qualities of character. These positive character traits are those things that will draw others to our Scouts. Giving them more opportunities for future success.

Our society values the sports coach. Coaches can change lives, and they do. But they have only a season or two with a boy. They have a few weeks with a boy each year. A Cub Scout Leader will be with the den potentially for as many as 6 years to methodically eke out the lessons and values he is entrusted to develop in his Scouts. We have some of the most dedicated and motivated leaders in the Scouts. They can teach congress a thing or two about working together to achieve a goal for the common good.

Did I mention the cool uniforms they get to wear? The Scout uniforms signifies to all who see them, “we are the same, there are no differences”. The Scouts uniform brings all of them, child and adult, as one, to the same platform, no matter how rich or poor he or she is and thus inculcating a feeling of equality amongst those wearing the uniform.

The Scouting organization, which encompasses Cub Scouts and Boys Scouts, is 3.5 million strong and growing, doing good work with and through today’s generation of tomorrow’s leaders. The Scouting organization is over 106 years old. It has faced the test of time, and has unequivocally done so with not so much of a quiver. Not too many organizations can brandish that merit badge.

Sound like fun? Is your boy up for the challenge? Interested in becoming a Scout leader?

- Adam Gioia: Pack Trainer. Den Leader. Father of a Cub Scout. Warren Township Cub Scout Pack 182.

Visit our webpage to learn more about us: www.warrenpack182.org