Ham Radio

Crew 47, out of Peabody, MA, is a Ham Radio crew. While they still do outdoorsy things, and are currently working on their outdoor bronze and ranger awards, almost all of the crew members are licensed amateur radio operators. They bring radio equipment with them while camping, and see what faraway countries they can contact. They also provide a public service, serving on camp staffs and camporee staffs, assisting with parking logistics, health and welfare, and will usually demonstrate the many aspects of the hobby to non-hams.

Submitted By: Gordon Gravelese

Arts and Hobbies

Crew 1, out of Beverly, MA, does no camping what-so-ever. We are a strictly arts-and-hobbies based, Native American performance group. We go to pow wows, school groups, and lots of cub scout blue-and-gold's. We dance, tell stories, teach about the Native American culture, and perform ceremonies (Webelos to Boy Scout crossover, Arrow of Light, Eagle Scout, Pack Meetings..you name it, we can write you a ceremony for it!). We are the most active crew in the council, having 3-4 activities a month during the school year, and 2-3 activities a month over the summer.

Submitted By: Gordon Gravelese

Fencing

Venturing Crew 1826 is definitely not a traditional Venturing Crew. Just a little over a year ago, our Venturing Crew began to explore the sport of fencing. At first we wanted to have fun with the uncommon sport, but after doing better than expected at our first tournament, we decided to keep fencing as competitive athletes. Since that first tournament, we've gained members interested in the sport, rather than camping and hiking, so we have focused on our non-traditional Venturing Crew activity, and have even begun practicing with other fencing teams around the area.

Submitted By: Joseph Wilson

Culinary Arts

The interest that brings Venturing Crew 17 in Champaign, Illinois together is food, — the Culinary Arts. When we first describe our group activities to people, they mistakenly think we are a cooking class. We meet in the kitchen of St. John Lutheran Church a couple times a month just to have fun with food. Recently, we have chosen a different topic for each month, like chocolate or fish, and have learned about the item, plus have tried recipes using it. We also tour restaurants, learn cooking techniques, watch instructional videos, taste different foods and try recipes for ourselves with the help of our adult advisor. Most of our recipes turn out pretty good, but even if they don’t, we have fun together trying them. For our next big project, we have been asked to prepare dinner for our Council's Annual Meeting for about 70 people.

Submitted By: Rebekah Morenz

Medicine

Our crew in Fayetteville, NC decided that they did want to work on the Bronze Award.... however our focus is medicine. Once or twice a month we go to the hospital and visit different departments. Our youth have made fingers in a prosthetics lab, participated in bio-feedback, performed an ultrasound on an expecting mom, scrubbed in and toured the operating room, practiced stitches, worked on a trauma dummy, watched veterinary surgery among others. It's been great! We're setting things up with a radiologist and the dermatology clinic right now. We're hoping to get in to the combat medicine school at Fort Bragg too. Our Crew loves it. Our uniform is a maroon scrub top with all the Venturing patches. We've even participated in Sea Scout training (we were so happy to be invited). The kids loved it so much we've been considering becoming a Ship.... perhaps, a hospital ship like the USNS Comfort.

Submitted By: Allison Jackson

Shooting Sports

Our crew is based upon NRA sanctioned shooting sports. We are Crew 1911 from Gerald R. Ford Council based in Grand Rapids, MI. We were chartered April 7, 2009 and are looking to expand the size of the crew with the program that we have imagined. Most of our youth are looking forward to competing in NRA sanctioned shooting events.

Submitted By: Kenn Andrus

Ultimate Frisbee

The Disc Gold and Ultimate Frisbee Crew is for High School and College students and is chartered through a DiscGolf course. They get together every so often at one of the local courses and play, teach, talk, basically anything that the members want to do. This is brand new for us as well and we are still in the process of building and looking for participants and advisors, so we are also still learning.

Submitted By: Scott Reek

Living History

We are crew 1865 and volunteer at Ohio Village in Columbus, Ohio. We do 1860 through 1890. We also do choir and orchestra. We are as untraditional as you can get. We are in the process of building two floats for the Memorial day parade in Worthington Ohio.

Submitted By: Mic O'Halloran

My Crew has been doing Civil War Reenacting as a side interest for years. About half the kids participate. The girls dress up in hoopskirts and lead a trail of soldiers around by the nose for the weekend. They also sometimes dress up as soldiers and participate in the battles. We are reenacting the 76th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (Zouaves).

Submitted By: Joe Garrett

I recently had a conversation with some Civil War reenactors about starting a Venturing crew around an historical CW unit. As a reenactor myself it would be an ideal venue, we sleep in historically accurate tents and have events about once a month. It would blend some traditional camping activities with an historical theme that I think young people would find very entertaining once you combined it with shooting black powder.

Submitted By: Mike