The Six Experience Areas

How Are the Six Experience Areas Used in the Program Planning Process?

Social Interaction
Social interaction may take the form of a formal event such as a dance, banquet, or party. Social activities can be informal gatherings, too, such as a small caucus held before the meeting to deal with crew business, or just talking about what's happening at school or in the community. Youth must be allowed time for formal and informal social interaction. To be successful, a crew must establish and maintain relationships between group members. A group is not successful if its members do not like one another or continually put one another down. A group or crew is successful when its members enjoy one another's company, are committed to one another's success, and work cooperatively together. The cooperative games in the Venturing Leader Manual are excellent exercises that can be used to bring crew members together.

Formal and informal social gatherings or activities that cause all members to interact should be a natural part of the crew program.

Leadership Development
The crew theoretically is run by Venturers. The training and development of youth officers and/or the crew leaders is critical. Leadership development can take the form of formalized training provided by the adult crew leaders or council/district training committee, all using the crew officers' seminar.

Leadership is developed when each Venturer has an opportunity to experience being a leader. Leadership development in Venturing is action; a crew officer learns about leadership by holding office in the crew and by performing the duties and responsibilities of that office, or by leading an activity.

Leadership in Venturing is anything that a group member does that helps the group accomplish a task or maintain relationships; leadership is also service to others in the crew. A congratulatory remark, a pat on the back, and recognition for individual accomplishments and performance of assigned tasks are considered methods of leadership because they help to create quality, caring relationships within the group. Every member in the group can experience leadership through the assignment of simple to sophisticated tasks that will result in a successful experience for the group.

Everyone in a crew can be a leader. The climate must be created in the crew whereby each member will have an opportunity to experience leadership without the pressures of being an officer.

The Advisor's role is to ensure that power and responsibility are shared by all members of the crew. Crew members should be committed to one another's success and needs, as well as the goals of the crew. For this to happen, all members must have input and influence on group decisions and some control over group resources such as money or supplies.

An understanding of the leadership development process is very important. (See Venturing Leader Manual, Initiative Games.)

Personal Fitness and Development
Program and activities that require manipulative as well as intellectual skills should be incorporated in the crew program. These include learning first aid, rappelling and rock climbing, computer programming, and how to administer CPR. There are numerous activities that require skills development. Venturing is experiential learning.

Service
Leadership is service. To be a good leader one must learn how to give of oneself to and on behalf of others. Developing and participating in service projects is one way the crew can ensure that service is an integral part of its program and activities. These activities, such as Scouting for Food, may be sponsored by the BSA local council, or the crew members may come up with their own service project that will benefit the community or the crew's chartered organization.

Citienship
Opportunities for young adults to learn more about their community, county, state, and nation are an important part of the Venturing program. Citizenship program activities help youth members develop a better understanding of America's governmental systems and learn the rights and expectations of citizenship. Citizenship program activities are designed to reinforce pride in our American heritage.

Outdoor Activities
Activities in the outdoors are always attractive to youth. These activities can also serve as social experiences and learning situations. Beach parties, picnics, ski trips, weekend camping, canoeing, and sailing can all be designed to build self-reliance and improve social skills. There are numerous fun activities available in every community that can also be educational. All crews should include outdoor activities in their program plans. Plan a weekend to visit your BSA local council camp. Plan to have your crew go through the Project COPE program. The local council service center is an excellent resource for such activities.

Problem-Solving Skills for Venturers
A crew Advisor's and crew youth leader's ability to solve problems and involve every crew member in the planning and implementation of quality activities is a challenge. Positive relationships must be established with members of the crew. These relationships should develop trust and openness.

Problem-Solving Process
Every individual and every group faces problems that must be solved. People working to plan and develop projects face new problems all the time as they draw input from group members. The following simple process shows one way to solve problems that arise during crew meetings and activities:

Step 1: Empathy--Define the problem. This includes understanding the problem thoroughly by finding out all the facts about it. Once those facts are clear, decide on the goalor goals to be reached. As you do so, state the values that are implied by the goal as the crew or group defines it.

Step 2: Invention--State all possible ways to reach the goal. Rather than stating only one way, put down as many as possible, even though some of them might not seem very practical. If the crew works through a number of committees, several proposed solutions will probably develop automatically. You might divide the crew into small groups and assign small parts of the problem to each for solutions and recommendations.

Step 3: Selection--Evaluate the possible effects of each of the proposed solutions. Take each proposal in turn. Then say, "If we do that, what will happen?" Trace the probable effect of each proposed action as carefully as possible. Solicit responses from members who are not very outgoing or vocal.

Choose the policy or solution that seems most likely to achieve the goals that the crew has set. These goals should be the consensus of the group.

Additional problem-solving processes are found in your Venturing Leader Manual, No. 34655.

Updated 03-22-08