Recruitment and activities are low, but the Monadnock region’s Scouts BSA (Boy Scouts) and Girl Scouts managed to find ways to stay active through the pandemic so far.
“COVID has actually forced me to find a way to do the things I wanted to do,” for years with the scouts, Greenville Girl Scout leader Heather Schoff said. Girls recently had a socially distanced visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus and presented the esteemed couple with some Toys for Tots items they’d gathered. Earlier in the fall they walked the Mason Rail Trail and commemorated their “bridging ceremony,” where girls level up in rank, at the Souhegan Country Club in New Ipswich, which allowed plenty of room for the girls and their families to celebrate the special occasion with a donated tea party, she said.
Eight new Daisy Girl Scouts joined this year, Schoff said, and the troop absorbed some girls and two leaders from the Wilton troop, which dissolved this year. There was still an overall dip in membership this year since some girls stayed away due to high-risk family members, and no opportunities for recruitment nights, she said, but lower numbers are welcome this year since the troop had to find a new venue for meetings that was compliant with Girl Scout COVID-19 guidelines. Schoff is posting videos of meetings online for girls who can’t come in person, and leaves materials for families to pick up to do home activities. The troop will scale back meetings from twice a month to one time over the winter, conducting outdoor activities like sledding whenever possible. Although girls are missing out on some activities, like caroling at the Christmas tree lighting or helping, in an unofficial capacity, with the summer activities Schoff runs as Greenville’s Recreation Director, the troop is trying to make the most of the pandemic and Schoff said she hopes they can look back and realize they had a lot of fun doing different kinds of activities when it’s all over.
In Jaffrey, which has a Scouts BSA boys’ as well as a girls’ troop, the boys’ troop switched to Zoom meetings in the spring while the smaller girl’s troop took a break, Scoutmaster Shannon Tremblay said, before both troops started up with weekly outdoor meetings in June, with regular temperature checks and mask wearing. Outdoor activities have dominated the troop’s activities since then, she said, with the girls’ troop doing three campouts, working on a physical fitness merit badge, planting flowers around town, and most recently, work on a Polar Express-themed Christmas light display for the Festival of Lights, a contact-free, drive-through light show that serves as a fundraiser for the troops. The troops will probably take a break for the holidays afterward, and leaders will reassess with parents in January about whether to consider meeting inside or not. “It’s requiring a lot of flexibility for the parents and for the scouts,” Tremblay said, but they’re still functioning and welcoming interested newcomers.
Also in Jaffrey, 17-year-old Conant senior Quinn Dowland started and completed an Eagle Scout project during the pandemic, constructing a “music playground” at Monadnock Early Learning Center in Peterborough after his troop cleared out brush from the preschool’s playground in June. It wasn’t exactly how he planned his project to unfold, he said, but he successfully completed a series of sturdy outdoor structures that could be played as musical instruments: the finished pieces include a marimba, a set of bucket-drums, and a network of hanging chimes and triangles, with mallets and sticks attached by wire. He had to change some of his initial concepts due to pandemic-related materials shortages, he said, and it was difficult at times to incorporate COVID-19 precautions into the construction, especially serving as the go-between for his six or seven helpers as they attempted to assemble the structures in a garage while social distancing. It could have been even harder if he’d attempted a different kind of Eagle Scout project like organizing a blood drive, Dowland said.
Dowland will age out of Boy Scout programming at 18, which means this year’s cancellations preempted his last trip to summer camp, among other milestones.
“At the same time, I was able to do it for so many years prior,” he said. He sees this year’s changes in programming having greater impact on new scouts, who are behind in their skills and advancing through badge work at a slower rate than they would otherwise.
“It’s hard to retain information or demonstrate skills,” on Zoom, Dowland said, and annual traditions have been scaled back in size and scope. “There are alternatives, but nothing close to what it would be,” he said.
In Antrim, Boy Scout Troop 2 saw lower returns for their annual “Scouting for Food” drive. This November, they collected 1,500 non-perishable food items from residents for the Antrim-Bennington Food Pantry, down from 4,000 last year, Scoutmaster Michael Redmond said, and they had to cancel their spring drive completely out of virus concerns. Some of the troop’s regular fundraisers relied on events that were canceled this year, and earnings are down for the ones they could modify, such as their ongoing wreath sales. The boys continued to meet for a mix of Zoom-based and outdoor activities, Redmond said, with lots more hiking and canoeing than usual, and even a whitewater rafting trip in Maine.
Boy Scouts of America has had a rough year on the national level. The organization filed for bankruptcy in February, national revenues dropped 50 percent from last year, and more than 95,000 people filed sex abuse claims against the organization as part of its ongoing bankruptcy case.
Local troops continue to mostly stay sheltered from the national-level fallout, troop leaders say, although registration costs have continued to increase and the national-level insurance costs jumped this year. Annual registration costs up to $90, where it was just $50 five or so years ago, Redmond said. “In the scope of youth programs, it’s pretty cheap,” he said, but that each program increase makes it harder for the regional-level scouting institutions and individual troops to subsidize costs. The Mt. Monadnock District was able to subsidize a hike in insurance costs for local troops this year, Tremblay said, but District-level staff are reshuffling, which will make it harder when troop leaders call in search of help or information, she said.
The coverage of the national-level lawsuit is casting a negative light on Scouts BSA, Redmond said, describing past abuses as “haunting” the national organization despite the robust screening and training programs adult volunteers comply with nowadays. In addition, some people formerly associated with other Boy Scout troops in southern New Hampshire cut ties with the organization following its 2013 and 2015 decisions to allow gay boys and adult leaders, respectively, and others quit after the decision to allow females in all levels of scouting, effective 2019, Redmond said. Participation and recruitment also took a hit due to the pandemic, he said. Troop 2’s charter and their dearth of adult leaders preempts them from forming a girl’s troop, Redmond said, but that Peterborough, Hillsborough, and Keene all have troops for girls to join.
“Scouts [BSA] is still a very good program that instills leadership and service to the community,” he said. “We’re still out there, we’re still serving the community,” he said. “It’s a well run, good program that instills a lot of values and leadership skills and skill sets.”