New Year Thoughts
January 12, 2007
Greetings Advisers,
I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! Just wanted to get a message out, updating all of you on what's going on and coming up.
Recent Adviser positions filled
- Arrowpoint - Phil Abreu Jr.
- Banquet - Kari Costa
- Website - Charles Hoffman
- Achiefest - Matt Griffis
Winter Camp Awareness
Thanks to EVERYONE that helped out. We had so many participants that we ran out of patches for the staff. We have not forgotten about the staff and for the wait your guys will get slightly different, but COOL, patch.
Lodge Participation patches:
This is something that we didn't have time for at the banquet. I believe everyone turned in their lists of members who partcipated in at least 5 village activities in 2006, but if you haven't, please give it to Mark Clevenger at BusinessManager-at-AchewonNimat.org
Lodge Recharter
We did recharter on time to national. Unfortunately we did not make quality lodge for the two things we did not get last year as well. They are membership growth and brotherhood.
FYI, we recharted with 315 members which is less than the 372 we rechartered with last year. Brotherhood was 22%, up from 15% last year. One of the major reasons for the membership drop is that we had only inducted 55 new members in 2006. For brotherhood, we just need to get the word out early and get them to go thru in the first half of the year since we have 4 (5 if you include conclave) brotherhood ceremonies.
University of Scouting
January 27th
We are responsible for 2 sessions, a booth at the midway, snack stand, and entertainment. Both the classes are during the session after lunch and we have a start on both. One is Demystifying the OA. Seunen has volunteered to put this session on and will have good support for their session.
Next session is council camping opportunities - Daniel put in a request to the camping committee for some input and individuals to make short presentations. During the midway there will be an OA booth along with the dance team to entertain. The dance team is also doing the openning.
Lodge Website
Charles Hoffman has taken on the adviser role for the lodge web page. We do have a site www.AchewonNimat.org which is running, but the content isn't there just yet, but you can check it out. The idea is to use the site for ALL scouters to get Achie info. Just to let you know some of the ideas we have for the site is:
- A password-protected area on the site for members to get information that should be for OA members only
- Web space for villages to host their village sites
- E-mail handles that will redirect to officers/chairman/adivsers e-mail addresses so that the e-mail address doesn't change when officers change. It also protects the privacy of personal e-mails, especially youth. If for some reason you don't have an email account or want an account ONLY used for OA, we would be able to create one for you.
- A part of the page for you upload pictures
It's a work in progress and we don't have a chairman yet, but if you want more info or have ideas, please contact Charles at WebMaster-at-AchewonNimat.org
Chief's meeting
January 25th
First thing about the meeting is that the Council Coordinating meeting was scheduled for the same evenning at the office so we will have to move. By early next week or sooner we'll have confirmed date/time of the meeting.
This is an LECM so each village should bring their village officers and anyone that is interested in attending. The 2007-2008 calendar will be planned during the meeting along with usual lodge business. Just to let you know what's been discussed for the next year, we're going to try and spread out events as much as we can. One event that we may move is the Spring Wente ordeal. The Wente stakeholders' has taken on the tent duty, which gives us some flexibility to move that weekend. Another item is to have a Los Mochos Ordeal and to avoid scheduling conflicts with camporees.
Los Mochos Fellowship (Ordeal)
February 23-25th
The key 3 met earlier this month and we would like to bring back a Los Mochos ordeal. We'd like to start by making our Brotherhood fellowship weekend a full ordeal. This would allow us to get some candidates in before the fun events (achiefest, conclave) and could increase the service we provide at Los Mochos. We have the resources to put on a full ordeal so would like to have the lodge do it this year (less than 2 months from now). The membership fee for the event would remain $5 for this year and the candidate fee would still be $25. This is something that will be discussed at the chief's meeting more, but I would suggest getting the word out so that potential ordeal candidates could free the weekend. Work project list will go out to the achie group when we get it. It's also Ed Jordan's birthday on this weekend!
More Events
More events coming up that can be discussed more at the chief's meeting:
- Klondike Derby - March 2-4
- Achiefest - March 23-25
- Wente Ordeal - April 20-22
- Conclave - April 27-29
- Royaneh Ordeal - May 18-20
That's what I have for now on updates.
THANK YOU all for everything you've done and will do for the order! WWW,
Rob