Highlights: We are distinguished by offering our Scouts a high level of choice Our Scouts choose, organize, and lead their meetings, programs, and activities One of the things that distinguish the Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA from other Scout Programs or Scout Organizations is that it offers its participants something sorely lacking in their lives these days: choice. Today individuals, particularly youth, lead much more regimented lives than ever than before; they live in a world so structured that they have little or no input as to how they spend their time. Their day-to-day lives present them with few, if any, opportunities to make decisions beyond choosing one or two options, such as whether to have Mac & Cheese or fries with their cafeteria lunch. The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA encourage our Scouts to exercise their freedom of choice in several key areas of their personal and social development. Self-Determination Our Scouts choose, organize, and lead their meetings, programs and activities. The Scouts create their own programs, based on the adventures they wish to have. Our Counselors are only there to counsel the Scouts and to set reasonable limits on whatever the Scouts themselves decide to do. The Scouts decide for themselves how they spend their time and the counselors only provide assistance, where needed, to ensure the safety of those endeavors. Counselors may also provide additional resources, when appropriate, to help the Scouts achieve the goals the Scouts have chosen to attempt. Whether or not a particular endeavor is a success is determined by the Scouts themselves, as were the goals that the endeavor was intended to achieve. Achievement The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA give our Scouts the opportunity to assess and develop their own criteria of achievement by consensus and peer review. The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA use a system of Challenges, decided upon and developed by the Scouts themselves, which each Scout must meet through their own initiative. Scouts evaluate the performances of other Scouts, based on their own personal experience in meeting that Challenge. Success is determined by consensus and peer review, based on their shared experiences. Team members encourage every other member of the team to meet the Challenge head-on and surpass it with one another’s support. Scouts learn by doing, and ask that each Scout give their best. The Scouts ask of other Scouts what they themselves have already accomplished, and are personally knowledgeable of exactly what it takes to succeed. When go they out into their communities to learn and participate in Challenges or to achieve some other self-determined goal, such as working with firefighters or Web site designers, our Scouts do so with people who are actually earning their living in these fields, gaining practical hands-on experience. Citizenship The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA give our Scouts the opportunity to develop responsible citizenship and personal responsibility. Our Scouts develop their own code of conduct, based on the concepts of honesty and fairness that everyone understands. A guiding principle is that each must always give their best and strive to meet, if not surpass, the mutually agreed upon goals. To that end, everyone supports everyone else, encouraging one another to excel wherever possible. Because the activities are self-directed, everyone understands their goals and their part in achieving them. Success is achieved not so much by checking off boxes on a list but by rising to the occasion and giving it one's all. Mutual respect and admiration are natural by-products of giving your best, as is the success that generally follows. The result is that, by their own mutual consensus, our Scouts give their best to make themselves better and better, so that all may profit by it. In so doing, they not only make themselves better and more competent individuals, but also better and more involved citizens. Teamwork The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA encourage our Scouts not only to decide for themselves but also to decide as a group. They are presented with opportunities and choices, but it is up to them to decide, as both individu als and members of a team. Our Scouts, as a team, choose the elements of their uniforms from a list of uniform elements, each of which was chosen by a national committee of their fellow Scouts. Similarly, a national committee of Scouts determines the Challenges which our Scouts can choose to achieve. The Scout Programs of The Scout Programs of Adventure Scouts USA offer our Scouts the freedom to choose in each aspect of our Scout Programs, enabling them to value the choice of living a productive, service-oriented life for the betterment of themselves and their communities. It is natural that our Scouts, who choose, organize, and lead their own meetings, programs, and activities will modify and create their own Scout Adventure. The adventure after all, is all theirs.
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