Merit Badge counselors, Do you use them?

Hello

I have a son who recently became a Boy Scout.

I am finding out that our troop has not used merit badge counselors in the past and may continue this procedure in the future.

Confidentialy, is this a common practice?

Suggestions?

Thank you for your guidance

I know that some Troops do this, work on merit badges and forgo the use of a counselor. I think that they are short changing their Scouts, and that's too bad.

The merit badge program and the use of counselors is an important part of the process and an important experience for the Scouts. It gives them an opportunity to work with different adults and meet new people. Working with new and different adults also will help the Scouts open up and learn how to handle dealing with people they don't know.

Becoming confident when dealing with new acquaintances is an important part of life and can do nothing but help a boy for his future. Aside from the fact that there is expertice with counselors that a Scoutmaster or Assistant Scoutmaster may not have.

Part of the idea of merit badges is to give the Scout a chance to experience something else and develop an interest in a possible future hobby or vocation. Can someone whom doesn't have the expertice that a couselor may have really get a Scout excited about a new subject? A good counselor has the passion for his / her subject to make it interesting and fun.

While I think it is important to have counselors within the Troop and use them when you can, I also think it is very important to use individuals form outside the Troop.

exactly how would something like this be put in place?

I hope I'm not misunderstanding your question - are you asking how Merit Badge Counselors get to be such?

Most tend to be former Scouts who have become proficient in certain areas themselves. Others are outside volunteers who have been asked to serve as mentors enough times for a particular topic that they have become compelled to join BSA and serve as a counselor.

In both cases, they go through an application process - including an application specifically to be a counselor for a particular badge program:
http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34405.pdf

I believe they also have to be currently registered with the BSA, which also ensures that they have had criminal background checks.

Many long time Scouters can serve as MBCs for a half dozen or more badges. For popular and required badges, there are likely MANY MBCs.

But some are more obscure, or rely on folks OUTSIDE of the BSA - for example a local train club may provide MBCs for the Railroading Merit Badge after having a member willing to review the BSA program & join Scouting to provide the experience.

More information can be found here:
http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php?title...adge_Counseling

Someone on the Boy Scout side could probably best tell you where SEWISBSA's list of MBCs is locally. I'm sure we have one!