Sarah Earns Wood Badge

Sarah Receives her Neckerchief and Wood Badge Certificate

A proud day at Farm Life Farm. For those of you that are ignorant to the ways of the scouts, Wood Badge was created in 1919 by Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, who organized the first course at Gilwell Park. The Wood Badge program was designed as advanced leadership training for Scouters, drawing on Scouting's best traditions and modern leadership principles to develop more effective Scout leaders.   This program has evolved over the past 100 years into a modern advanced leadership training program for the principal adults. The training is long and involved, with several full weekends of training followed by several projects.

Sarah completed the following projects to earn her merit:

• Knot tying rack

  • She created a two-foot tall rack out of wood and PVC pipe with Knot examples glued to the header.

  • knot rack stays local and scouts are encouraged to work on knots during free time.

• Fire Safety Training

  1. As a certified Firefighter, Sarah has the necessary knowledge about fire behavior and safety.

  2. Sarah created a training program at the Bantam Firehouse and organized participants from multiple Troops. Extinguisher use was just one aspect of her Fire Safety Program.

• CPR Training

  

  Scouts work through the different aspects of CPR at different stations

  • The next project she organized was CPR training for both Scouts and Scout Leadership.

    • As an experienced EMS provider and CPR Instructor, Sarah has a tremendous store of knowledge. The Wood badge project allowed her to get more scouters trained.

    • She also organized a retraining schedule to ensure her efforts continue well into the future.

• Storage and Forgotten supplies

  • After many camping trips with her Troop, Sarah realized that there was a consistent pattern of Scouts forgetting important gear

  • She also noticed that many scouts were not packing correctly for their camping. Though the Troops already have excellent training for how and what to pack for a camping trip, you can only lead a horse to water. You cannot forcefully submerge its head until it drinks.

  • Sarah created a system of labelled storage boxes.

    • The "Incidentals" box

      • Spare clothing of various sizes

      • Towels

      • Sleeping bags

    • First Aid Box

      • Bandaging, splinting, and various medical supplies

    • Rope box

      • Ok, the ropes box is just for the knot rack, but she did take the time to get rope and store it in an organized fashion.

Why projects? There are many methods for proving ability. The wood badge uses these projects as their method to test candidates abilities by organizing and executing projects that will benefit the troop and have a lasting effect on scouts and leaders alike.