- Will you Consider This, at the start of February, the W. D. Boyce Council received new leadership and will all benefit from the experience and ideas he's putting forth.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds.

Please stay with me.

(upbeat music) He's from the Midwest and shares the same values as all of Central Illinois.

Ben Blumenberg has spent his Boyce Scout years and leadership in several Midwestern states and he joins me now.

So we'll all learn more about him and plans for Central Illinois scouting.

Welcome.

- Thank you so much, it's great to be here.

- Right, so tell us the beginning of Ben Blumenberg, you started in St. Louis.

- Yeah.

So I was never a Cub Scout growing up.

My mom says that I asked every year to join Cub Scouts, but there wasn't time or money to do so in my family at that time.

And so the answer unfortunately was no, but on a Friday afternoon in sixth grade, all the boys in my class were talking about a high ropes course they were attending that weekend.

A high ropes course is a jungle gym 40 feet in the trees complete with an angel repel, which is a headfirst repel out of the trees towards the ground.

- And your mother let you do that?

- She let me do it.

I convinced her somehow that night that I should pack a bag and go with them, and that was my first boy scout adventure and I've been on this adventure ever since.

- Ever since.

So you were like 11 years old or something?

- I was 12.

- 12 years old, interesting.

And then you said that you stuck with scouting, you're even an Eagle Scout.

- Yeah, I am.

My fourth summer camp, I was kind of sitting around on the campsite probably in one of my leaders here and he came up to me and he said, "I need you to hit the showers and here's a Necker shift.

You've got an interview."

And I said, "An interview for what?"

And he said, "Well, we are here week one and they're short staff.

So they're looking for people to stay the next seven weeks."

And so I interviewed that day, went home on Saturday, came back on Sunday, and that became my first summer of a nine year summer camp staff career.

- All right.

- Shortly after that, I joined the Boyce Scout professional staff and I've been a professional Boyce Scout now for over 20 years.

- That's an amazing story, that you didn't hurt yourself in that first adventure outing that you had.

What has been the most challenging for you making the change from being the college kid in the year after to being the professional then?

- Wow, great question.

I don't know if there's been anything that's been an incredible challenge, because even as a scout, the volunteers that you work with and the professionals you work with all have the same values and the same mission in mind.

And so if anything, the challenge has been going from leading the program and supporting the program directly as a camp staffer or as a youth in the program to kind of behind the scenes supporting volunteers and growing the ranks of volunteers who drive and support the program.

- How difficult is that?

You're going for parents all the time, but with two income households, it's kind of hard to muster up some of that volunteer, isn't it?

- Yeah, sometimes it can be difficult.

And we certainly see that two income families or single parent households, it's a little bit harder for them to get involved.

That actually precipitated one of our recent changes where we allowed girls to join Cub Scouts.

And then eventually our Scouts BSA, what we used to call Boyce Scout Program, and that was really driven by the fact that most families have kids in an age range of four years.

And so if you have a boy and a girl and you're in a dual income family or a single parent family, how do you take your boy over here for one thing and your girl over here for something else?

- Correct.

- When scouting is really designed to be a family focused activity.

And I tell a lot of our volunteers and a lot of the people I meet in the community that scouting is about kids, but it's also about helping parents learn how to interact with and play with and develop their kids and develop the character and citizenship and values of their kids.

- You had a little bit of the Boyce Scouts in general had a little bit of pushback when they, and it was decided to allow girls to join the Boyce Scouts.

And you were right in the middle of all of that, weren't you, about the time you came on?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So as you can imagine an organization that's more than a hundred years old change is difficult.

And I think primarily, maybe for some of our older members more than anyone else, they had a hard time understanding why allow girls to enter our Boyce Scout Program.

It has been interesting.

I've had the opportunity to sit on Eagle boards for half a dozen girls who have already become Eagle Scouts.

And I asked them, the Boyce Scouts of America, "Why this program?"

And over and over they tell me what the Boyce Scouts does, what the Boyce Scouts stands for speaks to them more than other programs did.

- Like Girl Scouts?

- Like Girl Scouts, like 4-H, like many other youth programs.

There's a great example, one of the first troops for girls that we organized in my previous council, the scout master sent me a photo from their first camp out.

It Saturday morning, sun's bright and shiny, there's a group of 10 girls out in this green field.

And the picture focuses in on one girl with red braids, neat as you'd imagine any American girl, wielding an ax.

And the grin on her face was huge.

And for me, it just resonated with me.

That's the experience I had.

- And that's what she needed.

- And that's what she needed, absolutely.

- And then you got it.

Let me kinda go back a little bit.

So you're in Eagle Scout, what was your Eagle Scout project?

- Great.

My Eagle Scout project was to identify trees on a three mile hiking trail near my home in High Ridge, Missouri.

- Okay, and how many trees were there, and did you set up placards or exactly how did you go about that?

- Yeah, so there were about 20 trees that we identified.

One of the adult leaders in my troop was a cabinet maker and he kinda helped me with the idea.

We routed the signs outta wood, and then we posted them on four by four signs near the trees.

- You learned that much more?

- Yeah.

- Good for you.

Do you still do any routing?

- Actually, I have.

When I was a camp staffer in St. Louis, every one of our camp sites at all of our camps had a sign that was routed like that.

And so during part of my time, I got to remake some of those signs.

- That was your specialty.

- Yeah.

- All right.

So you were in St. Louis to start your career, your official career, and then Bellville, Illinois.

So really, basically right across the river.

- Right.

I worked for the Greater St. Louis Area Council for nine years, and then transitioned to the Lewis and Clark Council, which was headquartered in Bellville, Illinois.

I spent seven years with the Lewis and Clark Council.

About the time I was leaving the Lewis and Clark Council, those two councils combined together and became one larger council.

And then I moved to the Sagamore Council based out of Kokomo, Indiana.

So I spent five years in Kokomo, Indiana, and now I'm happy to be here in the W. D. Boyce Council.

- You're resituating yourself.

What do you think so far of the W. D. Boyce Council?

'Cause you've had some experience with others, you've seen how other councils work around the country too.

How do we compare?

How do we hold up compared to everybody else?

- So the W. D. Boyce Council is an incredible council with an amazing history.

We're named after the founder of scouting, W.D.

Boyce, who is an Ottawa Illinois resident.

We're celebrating right now as we speak our 50th anniversary as a council.

And what has impressed me the most and it's really not surprising when you've done this job, as long as I have, but the volunteers and the community support for scouting is just incredible.

And so that's been kind of been a highlight of my transition here.

- Do you have some special plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary, your 50th birthday?

- Yeah, we have a whole host of plans.

We're gonna have a 50th anniversary camporee in Ottawa.

We're gonna have some special media events invite the public to see scouting in action at day camp.

We're working on a history book, "50 years of the W. D. Boyce Council."

- So is that an Eagle Scout project for somebody or?

- It's not actually, there is a- - You missed that opportunity.

- We did.

There's a group of gentlemen that are the Illinois Scouting Historical Society.

- Really, I didn't know there was such a thing.

- There is.

And they're helping us research and write the history of the council.

- Where are they situated?

Where are they located?

- So they're all around the state, but primarily I think they meet in Morton.

- All right, and they've all been Eagle Scouts, probably?

- They've all been in scouting.

About 4% of our membership end up becoming Eagle Scouts.

And interestingly enough, often our long term volunteers weren't scouts or weren't Eagle Scouts, but came to scouting as a parent and have stayed with us because they realized the impact it makes on youth.

- Well, that is a very nice compliment when you think about it.

- Absolutely.

- And they can see the values.

What types of values in today's world, 2022 are you emphasizing now?

People are on their phones, people are on their computers, scouting when you're out in the wilderness, you probably don't have a signal for some of those things either, right?

- Sure.

So it's interesting, with everything that we're facing today, the values of scouting are probably more important now than they've ever been, character, citizenship, physical, mental, emotional fitness, those are our three core tenets.

And if you look around, you see that we're starving I think as a society for leaders of character and people who have leadership training.

And that's something the Boyce Scouts is known for is developing those leadership skills in youth to prepare them to be community leaders.

- And most who have been in scouting and become Eagle Scouts, they end up being leaders in their communities.

- Yeah, absolutely.

We know that scouts and scouting volunteers are more active than anyone else in their local community and supportive of nonprofits in their community and their church and civic government.

- And that's just because of the values that you have have made an impact on their lives, you think?

- Yeah.

I think that when you begin as a scout and you commit yourself to the scout and law at eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old, and you recite that on a regular basis and your weekly scouting adventures are focused around those things, it really builds into the individual, those characteristics that we need the most as a society.

- What did you major in in college?

It wasn't scouting I know that.

- It wasn't, it was psychology actually.

- Oh, interesting.

- Yeah.

It was the only thing that kept my interest in college.

And a lot of people asked me, "How does that apply to working for the Boyce Scouts?"

- Yes, my next question, yes.

- Yeah, right.

Wouldn't a major in recreation or the outdoors be more applicable.

And honestly, my work is best done when I can multiply myself through volunteers.

And so understanding how to work with people is critical.

And so I think that that has helped position me for a great career in scouting.

- Well, then you can also, it's like a game at chess, you can get the right volunteers in the right places at the right time too.

- That's very important.

(chuckles) - What have you enjoyed most about your professional career in Boyce scouting?

In scouting, I shouldn't say Boyce scouting, scouting.

- I think when you can be instrumental in creating new opportunities and bringing scouting to a community that didn't have it previously, that's been incredibly impactful.

I think about a troop that I helped organize in Chesterfield, Missouri early on in my career.

There was a Cub Scout packed with a hundred kids that didn't have their own Boyce Scout troop.

And so we started a new Boyce Scout troop with a dozen boys and within two years they had 60 boys and they were having an incredible adventure.

And then in my second assignment, I served a community Ironton, Missouri that didn't have a Cub Scout program.

And we went and we recruited a bunch of kids and we had parents come to us signup night.

And there was one mom that just expressed a ton of interest and ended up, she became the Cub master and I helped support her through rebuilding this entire Cub Scout pack.

And they really ran a great program and she was an incredible leader.

And six or seven years later, I found out that her son became an Eagle Scout, and not only did he become an Eagle Scout, but he won a national award for his Eagle Scout project, which included a $50,000 college scholarship.

- Whoa.

- So that was pretty incredible.

- What was that project?

- I have no idea what the project was.

- What's been the most interesting project that you have been able to oversee in your three state run?

- Yeah, sure.

I think the most interesting projects are when volunteers can help inspire scouts to think about something that matters to them, and they can run the gamut.

There was a scout in Shiloh, Illinois, that his community didn't have a helipad.

So he raised $40,000 and built a helipad for their community.

- So he knew how to pour concrete and all that or what?

- Well, he recruits the volunteers and the support to help him make that happen.

And that's an example of a big scale, expensive project, but in Pond, Missouri, another community that I served.

There was a scout who with his fellow Scouts researched the history of their community and then created and illustrated a coloring book of the history of Pond, Missouri and that was his Eagle Scout project.

- What fun, and everybody could learn from it.

So is it still in print?

Was it in publication or?

- I don't know, it was available at the local library, but I don't know if it's still in print.

- All right.

- There's actually a young lady right now in the Northern portion of our council up near Princeton in Ottawa who's working on her Eagle Scout project, and there's a specific type of bird that nests in chimneys.

And so her plan is to create birdhouses that are faux chimneys to save this bird.

- To save it and to watch what it does or something?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- It's not a pelican or?

- It's not a pelican.

- Interesting.

How many kids each year... well, let's say in the W. D. Boyce Council, how many each year are trying, attempting to get their Eagle Scout badge?

And it takes a while, doesn't it?

You have to be a certain age.

- Yeah.

If you're really focused and you met every deadline along the way, you could become an Eagle Scout in around two years.

But on average it takes a young boy or girl about five, six years to become an Eagle Scout.

- And has to be done before they're 18, is that right?

- Has to be done before they turn 18.

It includes earning 21 merit badges, serving in various leadership positions, and the culmination is their Eagle Scout leadership project.

About a hundred youth each year in the W. D. Boyce Council will become Eagle Scouts.

- Well, that's great for our community.

If we could just get them to stay here then and do everything they need to do.

How many kids are in the council right now?

- So there's about 4,000 scouts that are involved in our 14 county area, and certainly our goal is always to grow that.

So our primary method to do that is each fall we'll conduct recruitments in schools for kids to join Cub Scouts.

- But not every school has one.

So a lot of times it's kind of a community troop, correct?

- Yeah.

Our goal would be for every school to have its own Cub Scout pack, but different communities have different needs, and sometimes we can't find the volunteers in a local community to make that happen.

So we have to combine a couple of schools together.

- And people generally don't mind that.

- No.

- No, then make new friends.

- Yeah, they love the opportunity.

It's been really interesting.

The pandemic in the last two years have caused, I think everything for kids to shrink, and kids' lives in general to become more complicated and more difficult.

But what we see is parents who used to have their kids involved in five, six, or seven activities have dialed that back and picked one or two activities that are most important and that they believe will make a lasting impact on their kids, and that's usually scouting and church and maybe a sport.

- Boy, well, bodes well for the scouts.

- Absolutely.

- And now you've been on a lot of outdoor adventures like that angel dive, whatever you said that was.

Had I known about that as a mother, that would've been it for me.

But what adventures do you like the most?

There's hot weather ones and there's cold weather ones.

And what do the kids like the best?

- That's a great question.

So scouting is for every kid and I think our national jamboree is the best way to exemplify that.

So in 2023, we'll hold the next national jamboree and there'll be 40,000 scouts from around the country at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in Beckley, West Virginia.

And if you are a scout who's focused on band, that's your thing.

There's a jamboree band and you're on stage playing in front of 40,000 of your peers.

If you're a scout that loves to skateboard, the jamboree has an enormous skate park.

Any adventure you could imagine or any opportunity for kids, it's there.

So the jamboree is an incredible opportunity.

I think for me right now, being a dad in scouts is fun for me right now.

- So much different than when you were just an employee.

- Right.

I have an 11 year old son who's a Scouts BSA, and a 10 year old daughter who's an Arrow of Light scout.

And being able to have these adventures with them that I loved as a kid and that I've helped other families have with their kids has allowed it to come full circle, and I'm just cherishing that time.

- Well, now you said that when you were a kid, there wasn't enough money, your dad was military and things were going on.

What kind of money do people have to have in order to invest and how much does it cost for the jamboree?

Or do the kids raise their own money through selling the- - Popcorn?

- The popcorn is really good yet it's dangerous.

And then there's the garbage bags are great too.

- Interesting.

So shortly after I joined Boyce Scouts, my first summer camp actually, the troop leaders recruited my dad to be the next scout master of the troop.

And so when I think back about my childhood, there are a lot of adventures that I had with my dad.

And there happened to be 10 or 12 or 15 other boys and dads along with us, but those were our adventures in scouting.

- [Christine] Correct.

- I think that's the memory, that's the opportunity that it creates for kids and families today.

- Connectedness.

- Yeah, absolutely, that connectedness.

And so we have certainly organized fundraisers to help make scouting available for every youth in our community.

And we have campership and scholarships that will apply.

But typically about a hundred dollars a year is what it would take for a young person to be a scout.

- So they could go out and rake leaves or shovel sidewalks and all that kind of stuff.

If they're interested and they can, then they've got some skin in the game.

- Absolutely.

Well, we feel it's important for a scout to learn to earn their own way, and there's always support available for them, but it's important that they develop that skill.

- And when did the popcorn sales start?

That's usually in the fall, isn't it?

- Yeah, popcorn sales typically September, October timeframe.

- Okay, that's good.

Do you have to set a goal of how many tins of popcorn you wanna sell for the council or is it each individual scout?

- Each individual scout sets their own goal based on their pack or troop, their needs, their program plan, what adventure they're going on for.

So a scout who's going to the national jamboree, which is a little bit more expensive will set a higher goal obviously.

The council aids to support that program and to help our volunteers raise as much money as they can through the popcorn sale as quickly as possible so they can get back to doing what's important, which is scouting.

- That they know.

Well, we just have a couple minutes left, but now somebody wants to volunteer.

Let's say their kids and grandkids are older and gone, but they have some time and they're interested and they hadn't even thought about W. D. Boyce Council, where do they get in touch with you or what do they do?

- Yeah, absolutely.

They can call our council service center, they can find us on the web.

If they're interested in becoming a member, the easiest way to do that is to go to beascout.org.

- Okay, all lowercase?

- Yep, all.

That's youth or adults and they can find a local opportunity in their community by entering their zip code.

And everyone's invited to join through that mechanism.

- So when you say join, what exactly does that mean?

- To join a local Cub Scout pack or Scouts BSA troop, or to volunteer and join at a different level, as a merit badge counselor, or as a leader, or in support of the council.

There's tons of opportunities.

- And then there's a vetting process too, especially with everything that's gone on in the world.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So every adult leader has to be a registered member.

They have a background check and we have a mandated youth protection program.

And so we have a very robust youth protection program, but they have to take a 90 minute youth protection training that outlines that program and their responsibilities and our policies towards youth protection and how we go about making sure that both our youth and our volunteers are safe.

- And that takes place at your headquarters?

- It's actually all online.

The youth protection training is an online program, that allows us to keep the consistency that everyone gets across our movement and across our council.

- All right.

Are you excited to be here and a little bit closer to home than Kokomo, Indiana?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I am very excited to be serving alongside the volunteers of the W. D. Boyce Council.

And I'm really excited about all the opportunities that Central Illinois has for my family and my young kids and my wife and I, and then certainly to be a little bit closer to home and closer to grandparents is an added bonus.

- All right, now I understand you're Cardinals fan, there's a lot of Cubs fans in town, so how are you gonna do that that you're not gonna get anybody's, the hair in the back of their necks standing up because you're rooting for the wrong team?

Basically, I'm from Cleveland, so I'm an Guardians fan, I guess.

- Okay.

I think if you love baseball, you can appreciate great baseball teams.

So we had a little bit of the same problem in Kokomo, Indiana though.

The majority of Kokomo is probably Cubs fans, although there are a lot of Reds fans, but as far as I'm concerned, it's Cardinal's country.

- There you go, that's right.

And you hear the Cardinals doing their thing every day, don't you?

- Absolutely.

- Well, thank you so much for being here, Ben, and welcome to town and we look forward to seeing some of your adventures learning more about them.

- Great, thank you so much.

I really appreciate the opportunity.

- Well, and thank you all for being here with us and stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

(upbeat music)