Venturing
Program - Staff - Resources - Crews - Calendar
You love exploring your passions, making new friends, and discovering the world. You’re always looking for an adventure. Rappelling a cliff. Perfecting your shot. Designing a robot. Kayaking into the sunset. Exploring your faith. Volunteering at an animal shelter. The choice is yours! Each activity provides an opportunity to shine and learn more about yourself and the world around you. Venturing is youth-led and youth-inspired. You’ll acquire life skills and gain experiences that will prove to be valuable regardless of where your future takes you, all while having a blast: leadership, event-planning, organization, communication, responsibility – the list goes on!
The Venturing Program
Venturing is an inclusive program through the Boy Scouts of America for males and females aged 14-21 (or 13 and completed the 8th grade). It's operated through Venturing Crews, units of youth and advisors that meet on set schedules and plan activities and events for youth like you!
The Venturing program emphasizes four main areas known as the A-L-P-S model:
Adventure - Mentoring, leading, and participating in crew-led adventures.
Leadership - Ongoing leadership development through training, mentoring, and hands-on leadership.
Personal Growth - Goal-setting in support of personal growth.
Service - Leading and participating in community service.
The Venturing program aims to enable young adults to:
Experience a program that is fun and full of challenge and adventure.
Acquire skills in the area of their crew's specialty.
Become a skilled training and program resource for other youth groups.
Experience positive leadership from adult and youth leaders and be given opportunities to take on leadership roles.
Learn to make ethical choices throughout their lives by instilling the values of the Scout Oath and Law.
Have a chance to learn and grow in a supportive, caring, and fun environment.
Resources
Venturing Officers’ Association President and Vice President’s Nomination Form
Venturing Officers’ Association President and Vice President’s Nomination Form Printed Form
Sample Regular Crew Meeting Agenda
Where to go Venturing Where to Go Venturing is a volunteer contributed database of various locations where a Venturing Crew or Sea Scout Ship might go for an outing or Summer Camp.
Marketing Toolbox Sharing your experiences of the amazing adventures you've completed and posting exciting pictures on social media can definitely help to get the word out to your peers. To assist with this effort, a Venturing Recruiting Toolbox has been put together with helpful resources you may need to recruit new members. They are intended for an individual crew member to hand flyers or brochures to prospective members. Councils and crews may use these materials to promote recruitment. Your marketing toolbox contains:
The Venturing Recruitment Guide
Strengthening Youth Through Venturing Reference Guide
Brochures, Web Banners, Billboards, and customizable marketing materials
Fliers, business cards, postcards and even bi-lingual print ads
Start a Crew Have an idea for a brand new crew? There aren't any crews close to you? Not finding what you want? Organizing a Venturing crew is easy to do!
Recruiting In order for a crew to be sustainable, they must continually draw in new members. Luckily, this isn't a chore! A larger crew can lead to more activities and more fun! Often times, crews lose members as their youth grow older and either move to a different location or age out. One of the best ways to prevent this is to ensure that your crew membership always represents a variety of age groups. A crew that is constantly bringing in new members will not only positively impact more youth, but will also offer a better program to the Venturers already involved.
Annual Program Planning It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what keeps Venturers in the program. They like to have fun, do really cool, challenging activities, travel places, and meet others. However, in order to make all of these things happen, a crew must plan and prepare!
Activity Interest Survey Use this survey to help develop the crew's annual program plan of activities.
Activity Planner Sheet This tool comes in handy for planning a well-organized activity.
Boy's Life Resources Boys’ Life produces a number of useful resources such as a planning calendar, planning charts, and other program helps.
Planning Your Crew's Annual Program Budget These help to make crew budgeting straightforward.
Crew Operating Budget Worksheet Excel Version.
Program Capability Inventory Use this resource to help get more adult volunteers involved with your unit, and to get those who are already involved even more engaged.
Scholarships Dozens of universities, BSA local councils, and religious, civic, and military organizations offer college scholarships to Venturing Summit Award Recipients. Some scholarships are needs-based; others are merit-based. Some go to every Summit Award Recipient who applies; others are highly competitive. We have compiled a list of scholarships available to Summit Award Recipients and will update our list, as necessary. If you find any errors or are aware of other scholarships, please email the National Venturing Vice President. These scholarships are offered by independent organizations and may not be endorsed or maintained by the Boy Scouts of America.
Core Awards These core awards (Venturing, Discovery, Pathfinder, and Summit) serve as benchmarks along a Venturer’s journey. They are designed to work with crews of any specialization.
