I have a practical problem with how to post a service project that a Scout performs incrementally over an extended period of days. I would appreciate ideas on how this situation should be handled in the new activity reporting system.
The Scout is heading up a food drive. This is a excerpt from the log the Scout has been keeping (edited to remove identifying information):
5/3 - sent emails to neighborhood, participating businesses & put put collection bins on front porch – 20 minutes
5/4 - Picked up donations at neighbor’s house & made announcement at scout meeting - 20 mins
5/6 - Distributed flyers and shopped for food drive – 50 mins
5/7 - Picked up food in nearby town – 60 min
5/8 - picked up food at neighbors - 15 min
5/10 - load food into car - 15 min
5/11 - delivered food at community assistance center (CAC) – 60 min
5/15 - shopped for food - 30 min
5/20 - delivered food to CAC – 60 min
5/21 - distributed flyers to more of the neighborhood - 45 min
5/22 - pick up food at neighbors - 15 min
How should we tell the Scout to enter this into the activity report, as a single entry when the Scout has finished the project or make a daily entry each day that the Scout works on the project? Or should the unit handle the data entry just like we used to do in the old service hour reporting system? The latter seems a bit burdensome given the number of key strokes it takes to complete the form, but then aggregating the dates and time at the end, doesn’t really tell what the Scout did. Does it matter which way it is handled? If there is a best practice, could SUAC address this is in a forthcoming training video?
The situation I describe is typical of the way many of our Scouts do service projects (including many Eagle projects), especially when they are working on the community service requirement for Citizenship in the Community. They aren’t big single day events; rather they are performed a few minutes a day, spread over a few weeks or a month.
Thanking all who respond in advance.
Yours in Scouting,
Chuck Olson
@CharlesOlson - in the old system these would have been singular entries at the end of the project. Likewise the reporting of eagle projects is the same in servicehours.scouting.org so the same thing. I do suppose that you can enter each phase being careful to have exactly the same title for each entry so that a total could be achieved. But certainly a valid thought.
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or have the scout enter it them self and you approve
For my son’s Eagle project, we entered his total hours on the date he completed rather than try to create a new event for each day over a four week period.
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I would recommend contacting your district / council before entering Eagle Scout service project hours. Some have an Eagle Scout rank processor who enters those hours.
After looking at the list of days and times, I think that you can do it any way you want to as long as the scout gets credit for the total number of hours. If he is doing an Eagle project, I would keep the manual log that he has and then total the number of hours for the entire project. I have also recorded whole hours by day and for those with partial hours, I added more than one day to form an hour and put the ending date for that hour. Not sure that there is a best way.
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Donovan:
Having the Scout enter their own service hours would be ideal but I’m not sure it is a realistic expectation, given the attention span and attention to detail of most 11 to 16 year old Scout’s.
First it requires leaders to understand the system well enough to then be able to teach the Scout’s how to do it. From my experience, most units are fortunate if they have one adult who is willing to take the time necessary to learn more than just the basics needed to post advancements. Sometimes I think our systems are demanding too much from an increasingly smaller pool of volunteers.
Most parents want Scouting to be a fun informal learning experience for their Scout with minimal involvement on their part. Few want to have to stand over their Scout’s like they have to to get school homework turned in.
It used to be that we relied on older Scout’s to train and sign off on younger Scout’s requirements, but Scoutbook doesn’t allow that. Instead it adds more duties to the Scoutmaster and the few adults who are willing to volunteer.
I appreciate what the members of SUAC do and what y’all have to put up with.
