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Cub Scout Pack 210
(Walnut Creek, California)
 
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Welcome back to the school year – we hope you’re all settling into a new routine after the summer break.  Pack 210 has a great year planned, and we look forward to sharing the experience, fun and adventure with you and your sons.

This year Pack 210 will be more assertive in community service projects, and we want to hear your ideas.  Community service has always been integral to Boy Scouts of America, and we are going to strive harder to adhere to our slogan of “Do a Good Turn Daily.”

I have volunteered to help coordinate community service projects for our pack. While there are a few projects already lined up (look for two that are fast approaching!), I would love to hear your ideas.  What community related projects can our pack get involved in this year? Please email me your ideas. Consider timing, our age group, attention span, and physical ability. Suggestions will be presented to the leadership committee and den leaders to discuss and determine next steps.

Additionally, as parents, we are leaders and role models responsible for training, educating and supporting our children. In conjunction with our group effort, we encourage you to help your son identify the numerous opportunities to perform good deeds on a regular basis.

Below I’ve included excerpts from the Boy Scout Handbook and a couple of Scouting websites. Please read them and share them with your scout to help convey the concept of Do a Good Turn Daily.

We are working on a “Do a Good Turn Daily” section on our pack’s website, Pack210.org. It will include ideas, upcoming events/opportunities and kudos.

We look forward to an exciting year with Cub Scouts!

Yours in Scouting,

Julie Connolly

juliehconnolly@gmail.com


Some Good Turns are big - saving a life, helping out after floods or other disasters, recycling community trash, working with your patrol on conservation projects.

But Good Turns are often small, thoughtful acts - helping a child cross a busy street, going to the store for an elderly neighbor, cutting back brush that is blocking a sign, doing something special for a brother or sister, welcoming a new student to your school.

A Good Turn is more than simple good manners. It is a special act of kindness.

At the very heart of the Boy Scout Movement is the friendly Good Turn. It might even be called the motive power of the Movement and because it is so essential to the boy, to the organization, and to society in general. It is of great importance that we understand all that it really means as well as how to best stimulate its use and recognize its values.

AND here is the impetus of how Boy Scouts was brought to America, through a simple Good Turn….

What We Owe To the Good Turn

As a real matter of fact it was an unselfish, fine spirited Good Turn by an unknown English boy which brought Scouting to America in the first place. The incident, now a cherished tradition in the annals of the Boy Scouts of America, ran as follows: William D. Boyce, the Chicago publisher, a matter-of-fact business man, had lost himself in the heart of a London fog, and in his bewilderment he looked here and there.

A street urchin, noticing his embarrassment, came up and saluted Mr. Boyce and said, “May I be of service to you?” Mr. Boyce said, “If you can show me how to find such-and-such an address it will be a real service.” This lad very smartly saluted and said, "Sir, follow me." He forthwith brought him to the place that Mr. Boyce desired.

Then Mr. Boyce, characteristically of the traveler, pulled his coin purse out and offered the boy a shilling. The boy promptly saluted and said, "Sir, I am a Scout. Scouts do not accept tips for courtesies. The man said, "What did you say?"

The Scout repeated, and then added, "Don't you know what the Scouts are?" He said, "No, I don't, but I would like to know." The boy said, "Follow me." Boyce pleaded for the opportunity to do his errand and then, as he tells the story himself, this lad was waiting for him outside and took him to the office of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, whence he brought back to America a trunk-load of printed matter.

He went to Washington and with his good friend Mr. Livingstone, who subsequently was for 15 years the president Boy Scouts of America; he incorporated the BSA under the laws of the District of Columbia.

The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in 1910, and in 1916 granted Federal Charter by Act of Congress.

Every year has seen Scouting grow larger and larger in its outreach until literally millions of American boys have had brought into their daily lives the gospel of the Good Turn.

What Is a Good Turn?

A Good Turn is a volunteered kind act of good deed. Boys must be encouraged to watch for things that need to be done, and then do them without being asked. More, boys must be trained and educated into the Good Turn Habit. They must be helped to see that doing a job which they are already supposed to, even cheerfully, ought not to be classed as doing a Good Turn.

Performing the regular routine duties about the home is not a Good Turn. The Good Turn is a bigger finer thing--the Good Turn is really a philosophy of living, of which Service to others becomes the keyA good Turn is a volunteered kind act or deed. If you can stimulate a boy so that such actions become habitual, then you have made the Good Turn Philosophy work in his life.

Such a process is a process of education, and will not be accomplished except by careful planning and by presenting the matter again and again under all sort of circumstances, and by yourself setting up and keeping in operation certain sorts of activities which will help the boy catch the idea and experience the thrill of the real Good Turn.