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Which kind of Crew are you, Alpha List or Awards? Venturing is quite flexible and has possibilities for several differnt emphases to suit the interests and desires of crew members. Here we contrast two different approaches to programming in Priests Quorum Venturing, which we are calling the Alpha List Crew and the Awards Crew. An Alpha List Crew operates a broad, generic, and boy-driven program. The alpha list calendaring process is simple enough that the young men can do most of it themselves with some guidance from their advisors. It starts without any pre-conceived ideas of what the crew and its program are all about, except perhaps that the program of activities should be broad and balanced, that it should be appealing and interesting to all of the young men, and thus gain their ownership of the program. This approach starts with a Venturing Activity Interest Survey (the alpha list)1 completed by each young man in the crew. The next step is to compile the survey results to share at a planning session (officer's seminar) of the crew or crew presidency. At the seminar, the most popular activities from the survey are slotted to be held on specific dates through the coming year. To further help calendar a "broad and balanced" program, Alpha List Crews may perform a step prior to assigning specific activities to dates. This is that all of the dates open for activities first be identified for the type of activity to be conducted, possibly on a rotating basis. Then an activity consistent with the specified type is assigned for that date. For example, if one of the activity types is Service, then, depending on how many types are being used, every fourth, fifth or sixth activity would be Service, so that a service activity is calendared for the crew every two to three months. Here are some activity type possibilities for an Alpha List Crew to consider:
Crew advisors and leaders must decide in advance the activity types to be used and assign these types to specific dates before slotting in specific activities from the survey to these dates. A crew using the alpha list calendaring approach would likely not have large numbers of young men receiving the various Venturing awards. However, Venturers who complete their Priests Duty to God would be close to meeting the requirements for the Venturing Religious Life Bronze award. For this to happen, it would be helpful for the Venturing calendar to include some Ethical Controversies activities and provide for Venturer participation in a standard first aid course. In general, for its young men to receive most Venturing recognitions, an Alpha List Crew would need to depend mostly on their working independently outside of the calendared crew activities. Great Salt Lake Council Crew 9791 featured elsewhere in this website is definitely an alpha list crew and used this approach for a number of years to maintain a varied and well-supported Venturing program for its young men in the Priests Quorum. Many successful scoutmasters have build their troop program around helping their boys progress through the requirements to achieve the rank of Eagle. Likewise, Venturing awards could be made the basis for a dynamic Venturing crew program (recognizing that some of the requirements for each of the Venturing awards are such that they will need to be done individually by a young man outside of the regular crew program). In fact, the number and variety of Venturing awards would allow for several different emphases for an Awards Crew. An Awards Crew could be built upon several obvious award combinations (and others are possible):
Priests Duty to God and Venturing Religious Life Bronze award have considerable commonality and with a little planning could be worked on together. Completion of the Duty to God fulfills one of the Religious Life Bronze requirements for LDS Venturers, but the latter could be completed earlier by fulfilling other requirements. Other Duty to God goals can also be made to count for Religious Life Bronze requirements and vice versa. (See chart correlating Religious Life Bronze with Priests Duty to God.) As noted above, an Alpha List Crew program could accommodate these awards without major adaptation of its calendaring process. If a Crew is trying to evolve from an alpha list program to more of an awards-based program, this awards combination might be the first step, especially since presumably the majority of the Venturers would already be motivated to achieve Duty to God no matter the quorum activity program emphasis. The permission granted by both the church and BSA to be able to use activities for dual credit for Duty to God and Venturing awards also means that Religious Life Bronze requirements could be easily introduced to Venturers in a way that in our experience appeals to many older youths. "Look. You already have about 80% of the Venturing Religious Life Bronze finished based on what you have done for Duty to God. How about doing these other [three] items?" The Duty to God/Religious Life Bronze awards concentration might also be used in combination with any of the strategies below to provide a broader crew program. In fact, with the Church's commitment to Duty to God achievement, adding of this emphasis to one of the strategies listed below seems natural and logical. This combination brings together the two most action oriented Bronze awards. A crew might focus on one or the other on alternating years or work on both simultaneously. In either case, a young man should have achieved both awards by the time he is ready to leave the Priest quorum. The work on these two awards alone over a two-year period probably will not fill all activity dates, so other types of activities will need to be included. Young men achieving Ranger will have truly become expert outdoorsmen. This type of award emphasis lends itself nicely to the two year time period generally available for young men in LDS Priest quorums. This is because the requirements for Outdoor Bronze are to achieve half of the Ranger requirements, any half of the core requirements and any four (out of eighteen) electives. The Ranger is achieved with the other half of the core requirements and four more electives. Therefore there is little or no catch-up work for young men coming into the priests quorum/Venturing program at various times. The program can be worked on a two-year cycle with every young man having the chance to experience everything the crew offers at one time or another. As with the Outdoor and Sports and Fitness Bronze combinations, there should be room for some other types of activities in the calendar of a crew with a Ranger emphasis. Quest requirements give a young man a high level of specialized expertise and accomplishment similar to Ranger except the focus is on sports and fitness. The relationship of the Sports Bronze award to Quest is different than for Ranger, however. Instead of the requirement the bronze award representing completion of any half of the requirements, Quest builds on the foundation of Sports bronze which has a rather specific set of requirements. Because of this, a Quest-based program may be more of a challenge to cycle as the program foundation for an Awards Crew and still accommodate young men entering the crew at differing times. The Quest manual outlines an intensive one year schedule to achieve this recognition (Quest Handbook, 2003 printing, p. 8), but for a Priests quorum environment might be stretched to encompass two years' time. Other types of activities will need to be scheduled to round out such a crew's the calendar. This new award is the in-depth version of Religious Life Bronze. (More information will be added here later.) BSA views the Venturing Silver as the ultimate Venturer recognition. Its achievement follows the sequence of Several of the Venturing awards considered above have requirements that include Red Cross training or certification in basic first aid and CPR, including Religious Life Bronze, Outdoor Bronze, Ranger, Quest, Gold, and Silver. Any crew considering an awards focus for its young men should make plans to include these courses in its calendar. One of the challenges for calendaring for an Awards Crew is how to cycle the activities so that young men entering the program at different times are not put at a disadvantage. This issue needs more thought. If any reader has a working model that solves this problem, we would like to hear from you. A critical issue for an Awards Crew is to make sure that decisions around program and activity emphasis are youth-driven and not imposed by the interests of the adult advisers. The Venturing method requires that crew members to have the major say in planning and carrying out the crew program. This includes identifying and prioritizing activities to be held, and taking the lead for the detailed planning, carrying out, and evaluating of specific activities. The calendar planning process would be somewhat different for an Awards Crew as compared to an Alpha List Crew. Planning may need to be done in stages, first identifying general areas of interest and focus, and specifying goals that all crew members will support. Interest surveys will need to be particularized around specific awards, and other techniques, such as brainstorming, will need to be more highly utilized. Within the framework of agreed-upon goals and interest areas, a schedule of activities may the be developed, but focused on specific requirements. An Awards Crew might evolve out of an Alpha List Crew over a several year period, as young men and advisors become more conversant and committed to the program of Venturing. Crews might begin with the introduction of awards that are simplest to achieve, and work toward Ranger, Quest, and/or Silver as a tradition of Venturing achievement develops. Either Ranger or Quest could serve as the basis for very dynamic Venturing programs. However, some caution might need to be exercised on committing the whole program to these emphases to make sure that all of the young men would enjoy the intense concentration on outdoors skills or sports and fitness. |
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