By the time they enter their teens, young people have established their attitudes, interests, and opinions about many of life's issues and choices. However, they need opportunities to evaluate their beliefs, goals, and abilities.
Specifically, teens need to test their capacity to:
Accept and meet new challenges
Make independent decisions and choices
Make important contributions to a team effort
Make ethically, morally and spiritually sound decisions
Contribute something of value through service to a community or family
School, sports, part-time jobs, religious activities, family commitments, homework, and just taking time to "hang out" with friends result in many teens having no time for anything else. People concerned with meeting the needs of busy teenagers often merge a variety of resources or develop their own programs to accomplish their goals.
What is the Venturing? Venturing is a new, comprehensive program developed with the needs of teenagers in mind. It offers teens an opportunity for investing their time in their futures. Time in the Venturing program is truly time well spent.
The Venturing program is unique because it utilizes extreme outdoor adventure as the method for building character, peer-to-peer bonds, and independence. A recent research study by Louis Harris & Associates determined that through activities such as camping, hiking, boating, snorkeling, and mountain climbing, a majority of Venturers receive the following benefits:
| 96% | "I made new friends." |
| 93% | "I had opportunities to go places and do things I had never experienced." |
| 91% | "I was encouraged to share my ideas and opinions." |
| 89% | "Being a Venturer has taught me to have more self-confidence." |
| 89% | "The activities in Venturing helped me prepare for the future." |
| 79% | "My crew faced ethical and moral decision-making choices." |
Another value of the Venturing program is its design for encouraging youth to provide service to others. Most Venturers (56%) participate in a service project in their community, such as cleaning up property, organizing food and blood drives, and working with the elderly.
The importance of service projects is threefold:
They help meet important physical and emotional needs.
They communicate the value and importance of other people.
They allow young people to develop empathy with those who are in need.
"Aloneness" is perhaps the largest factor contributing to a growing degree of disconnectedness between teenagers and their families. One outcome of this is a growing incidence of depression in the lives of teens. A combination of greater time demands on family members and expanded options for individual activities has led many teens to spend significant time alone. Venturing is a catalyst for interaction between peers with like interests and gives crew members and parents common ground for communication.
Venturers mention that because of the program they:
| 92% | Learned to get along with people different from themselves. |
| 92% | Practiced skills of cooperation and teamwork. |
| 91% | Had an adult to talk with about important issues. |
| 85% | Talked with parents about things learned in the program. |
The middle school through high school years are the last opportunity for young people to prepare for the challenges of adulthood. For those facing the task of providing structure and resources through which teens make their final preparations for their adult lives, Venturing Provides the very best foundation. Whether your teens are preparing for high school or getting ready for college, the program is flexible enough to meet their needs. Venturing is time well spent for your youth.
Venturing is based on a unique and dynamic relationship between youth, adult leaders, and organizations in their communities. Local community organizations establish a Venturing crew by matching their people and program resources to the interests of young people in the community. The result is a program of exciting and meaningful activities that helps youth pursue their special interests, to grow, to develop leadership skills, and to become good citizens.
Young adults involved in Venturing will:
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Learn to make ethical choices over their lifetimes by instilling the values in the Venturing Oath and Code. |
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Experience a program that is fun and full of challenge and adventure. |
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Become a skilled training and program resource for Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and other groups. |
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Acquire skills in the areas of high adventure, sports, arts and hobbies, youth ministries, or Sea Scouting. |
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Experience positive leadership from adult and youth leaders and be given opportunities to take on leadership roles. |
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Have a chance to learn and grow in a supportive, caring, and fun environment. |
The aims of the Boy Scouts of America are to build character, develop citizenship and foster personal fitness. The Venturing methods listed below have been carefully designed to achieve the aims of the Boy Scouts of America and meet the needs of young adults.
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Leadership. All Venturers are given opportunities to learn and apply proven leadership skills. A Venturing crew is led by elected crew officers. The Venturing Leadership Skills Course is designed for all Venturers and helps teach in an active way to effectively lead. |
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Group Activities. Venturing activities are interdependent group experiences in which success is dependent on the cooperation of all. Learning by "doing" in a group setting provides opportunities for developing new skills. |
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Adult Association. The youth officers lead the crew. The officers and activity chairs work closely with adult Advisors and other adult leaders in a spirit of partnership. The adults serve in a "shadow" leader capacity. |
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Recognition. Recognition comes through the Venturing advancement program and through the acknowledgment of a youth's competence and ability by peers and adults. |
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The Ideals. Venturers are expected to know and live by the Venturing Oath and Code. They promise to be faithful in religious duties, treasure their American heritage, to help others and to seek truth and fairness. |
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High Adventure. Venturing's emphasis on high adventure helps provide; team-building opportunities, new meaningful experiences, practical leadership application, and lifelong memories to young adults. |
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Teaching Others. All of the Venturing Awards require Venturers to teach what they have learned to others. When they teach others often, Venturers are better able to retain the skill or knowledge they taught, they gain confidence in their ability to speak and relate to others and they acquire skills that can benefit them for the rest of their lives as a hobby or occupation. |
An important goal of Venturing is to help young adults be responsible and caring persons, both now and in the future. Venturing uses "ethical controversies" to help young adults develop the ability to make responsible choices that reflect their concern for what is a risk and how it will affect others involved. Because an ethical controversy is a problem-solving situation, leaders expect young adults to employ empathy, invention, and selection when they think through their position and work toward a solution of an ethical controversy.
Source: Boy Scouts of America flyer -
Venturing... Time Well Spent
and www.scouting.org.
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