Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
This year I’m an AoL Den Leader and I’m facilitating my Cub Scouts to get their new Uniforms and it occurs to me that there is not consistency in uniforming in the various branches of Scouting America programs.
Above the Right Pocket of every uniform in Scouting America, appears a patch or embroidery of something. For Venturing and Sea Scouts, that something is those programs, for Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA programs it’s the parent orginization “Scouting America.” I’d suggest two changes that would be ideal to make at this juncture of the Scouting America rebrand to make uniforming more consistent.
All Uniforms should have “Scouting America” above the Right Pocket (instead of some having Sea Scout or Venturing) in order to identify that we are all a part of the larger parent organization.
The World Crest emblem patch (or at least the Scouting Americal Ring) should be updated to highlight the program the Scout is associated with. Something like this Cub Scout plus World Crest is attractive to me. I personally like having 4 unique world crest patches, one designed for each program in Scouting America, but simply having 4 rings would suffice too. The new ring should become mandatory (thus integrated to the World Crest patch) to each scouting program and would be functionally used to identify the program the scout/scouter is participating in to the non-scouts, and scouts unfamiliar with alternate Scouting America programs.
As a volunteer this forum is the only way i know to suggest this uniforming Change to the National organization, but feel free to reach out to me to discuss further.
All uniforms being produced going forward will have “Scouting America” as the insignia above the pocket. Patches to update old uniforms are already available for all four uniform colors, including Sea Scouts and Venturing.
The World Crest itself is the logo of the WOSM and not something Scouting America can (or should) change. The ring around the crest could be updated (and there’s already a Scouting America one available), but that’s a matter of personal opinion. The direction we’ve been heading is to reduce the number of differences on the uniforms. We already have color tabs to indicate the program. Making another patch mandatory seems unnecessary to me, but to each their own.
Actually, the folks who make uniforming decisions aren’t on these forums. These are almost exclusively volunteers, rather than national staff. Your best bet to get an idea like that out to the national personnel is either to circulate it up via your council professional staff, or, you might be able to submit suggestions via the scoutshop.org email interface (assuming it’s still working). At the least, they might be able to tell you whom to contact to suggest a change.
ETA: Too many "actually"s in the first sentence. Shoulda read that one more closely before posting. :^P
Great Suggestion Charley, I did submit the suggestion to the ScoutShop.org email in the footer of the website. I even linked to this discussion. Thanks for the helpful suggestion.
