As the school year is wrapping up, I just wanted to share some of the successes we have had in the Seminole Springs District this past school year!
Youth Membership- Over 900 new families have joined scouting this school year! We ended last year with almost 3,000 youth in the program, which was a 11% increase over 2009!
Adult Membership, we have over 1,000 registered adult leaders in our district. A 1:3 Ratio for Adult to youth, helping us deliver a great program to our youth, Thank you!
Camping- Cub Family Campout, Webelos Woods and the Camporees saw great turnouts and ran excellent events that gave boys memories that will last a lifetime! We had close to 1,000 people attend these three events. We are expecting 250 Cub Scouts in June at our week long Day Camp, and all troops to be attending summer camp!
Training- We have more trained adults right now that we have ever had. Trained adults means better programs for youth, which helps our retention, and delivers on the promise of scouting.
Advancement- We had 59 Eagle Scouts in 2010 and are off to another great start in 2011!
Scouting for Food- We collected over 40,000 lbs of food! A 17% increase from 2009. Great job scouts and leaders in leading the push and helping out a lot of families in need.
Popcorn Sales. We sold $160,000 worth of popcorn this past fall, which put close to $50,000 in the packs/troops accounts to help pay for the years activities! This was a 15% increase from the previous year!
Camp Card Sales- We have sold $128,000 worth of cards this spring. Which also put another $50,000 in unit accounts! A 47% increase over 2010!
Friends of Scouting- We are wrapping up this campaign in the next week, and have had almost 400 families help donate in our Friends of Scouting Campaign that helps families be able to join Scouting, get to camp, uniforms and helps keep our overall costs of Scouting to a minimum!
Golden Eagle Dinner- 400 people turned out for our Golden Eagle Dinner this year, with 70 Corporate Sponsors supporting our Scouts, our community has once again shown us that what we do in Scouting goes much further than the scout meetings, but these values are highly regarded in the schools, work places and in our communities!
Pinewood Derby- After all packs had their thrilling Pinewood Derby Races, we have close to 100 people join us for the District Pinewood Derby race which featured many great races, and cars!
Scout Show- Over 40 units had booths at the Central Florida Scout show, a great event to Scouts to interact with Scouts from throughout the Council and allow us to see just how big Scouting is in Central Florida.
District Banquet- Close to 100 people turned out for the Mardi Gras themed District Banquet, which we had a chance to honor many volunteers for the service to our Youth!
In all, it has been a very successful year of Scouting! Thank you to the many volunteers and donors who have helped us grow Scouting in Seminole County, with your support we are able to deliver a program that allows our youth opportunities they would never be able to experience, learn skills you cannot learn elsewhere, and become leaders in our communities. We have done a great job of delivering the program that we strive for our youth to have, and one that our families need us to provide.
Thank you for all you do for Scouting.
Randy Steil, District Director