Category Archives: Discussion

My name is Kimberly McGilvray; I’m a Senior Rover Scout/Cub Scout Leader with the 21st Highlanders at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. When you meet me for the first time, you wouldn’t expect me to have a constant inner turmoil. You might assume that I am attending university and volunteer with a local Scout group. I have a mental disorder marked by alternating periods of elation and depression, which is known as Bipolar. Wikipedia provides a good plain language definition:

“Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis for a mood disorder in which people experience disruptive mood swings. These encompass a frenzied state known as mania (or hypomania) usually alternated with symptoms of depression. Bipolar disorder is defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or more depressive episodes.”

To illustrate this point, I have created the graph below with the following explanation to help you understand.
The blue line across the middle of the picture is the “normal” range of human emotional ups and downs.
“Downs” are when you get dumped by your partner, find out that after all your studying you still fail your exam, hear about your parents getting a divorce, or your pet has ended up on death’s door – for example.
“Ups” are when you’ve just passed that exam, eaten a rather delicious burger, finally got that promotion you’ve been waiting for, found out you’re about to become a parent, or just had delicious mind altering sex – for example.

The green line is an example of the mood swings a normal person may experience, kind of veering from ups and downs at an occasional but not overly dramatically or sudden sense.

The purple line is someone suffering from bipolar. I think you get the gist, somewhat sudden, erratic, and way above and below the normal range of ups and downs.

So, what does that have to do with anything? Continue reading →

Note: A Rover doesn’t just paint fish onto drains to remind people that those drain run straight into fish habitat.

No, a Rover would find a source of paint, get the entire Area involved, sign up troops, companies and crews, map out routes to be covered, distribute the paint, stencils and routes, organize the press to get involved, and have hot chocolate, a hot dog and a badge delivered to each participant.

A Rover doesn’t just go to camp.

Photo by Flikr user Markeburge with permission

No, Rovers are the type to organize, plan and staff a senior sections camp for both Scouting and Guiding with over 500 in attendance, and wear the most awesome costume for the theme because it is shamelessly ridiculous and singing “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” word for word at the top of their lungs, while directing traffic and welcoming campers with a smile on their face and in their hearts even though they’ve been up for 30 hours and won’t get much sleep for the rest of the weekend.

A Rover doesn’t just sign a petition for a new park.

Photo by Flikr user Taekwonweirdo under CC

No, A Rover would be the one organizing the effort, rounding up people to get signatures, pushing the media for more attention, getting university students to figure out the economic impact of the addition of the park, pushing politicians and calling bureaucrats, presenting the final stack of signatures before the city council, and then holding the feet of the decision makers to the fire once they decide to go forward.
Oh you better believe there’s more ?

Crisis: Princeton’s dictionary via Google defines the word crisis as

A crucial stage or turning point in the course of something

So why would I say Rovers are in a crisis? Simply put, Rovering in Canada has an identity crisis:  Is it a development program,  a social club, a service organization?

Do we treat Rovers as being less than capable and needing to be hand-held into the leadership positions they choose to take?  Are Rovers not capable of assuming leadership positions right now, letting the “old guard” take a rest?

At present Scouts Canada in terms of process / membership database purposes defines Rovers as being a “youth” section bundled with Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Venturers.  When you register as a Rover, officially you are supposed to use the “Youth” form and pay the “Youth” fee.

Comparing Venturers with Rovers is like comparing the United States and Canada.  Sure, they both share the same parent organization or continent but there is no bigger difference in sections between the two. In Venturers you are dealing with a population that primarily is high school based, is living at home and for the most part, is still has a fairly regular schedule of school and then post education activities.

In Rovers, we have a wide range of demographics, many are in post secondary schools of their choice, some are in the working world straight out of high school and yet several more are in the workforce after finishing post secondary degrees.

In addition, most Rovers are section leaders, the vast majority have at least Woodbadge I, many have Woodbadge II or more.  For all intents and purposes, Rovers are operating way more in a volunteer capacity than a “needs to be structured” youth capacity.

So, why are we still sticking the “youth” label on Rovers?  For many entering post secondary they want to shed the “youth” label, operate more independently as adults.  If we label someone in the same pack as the younger sections we are likely going to treat them subconsciously in a closer manner to the younger sections than we are to other volunteers.

What can we do about it?

First of all, let’s move Rovering to a new registration form, let’s have 3 forms, the BCSV form, the Rover form and the Volunteer form.  The only difference between the Volunteer form and the Rover form is the Rover form entitles one to participate in Rover focused events / camps etc.  We require the PRC/reference check to volunteer with any other capacity anyways so just bundle all of that in.  If we had Rovers self-identify we would have an (reasonably) accurate count of how many Rovers we have.  Right now the only valid statistic is by a birth date age range search.  The “registered as Rovers” number is a fraction, as few as a third of the real amount.

Technically according to the book of all (BP&P) Rovers are in a separate category, a hybrid youth/volunteer.  In short, Rovers don’t fall into either category cleanly.

Let’s drop the Rover fee and make Rovers the one section where national eats the insurance fee.  In a lot of cases Rovers are relatively poor post secondary students.  Many Councils are moving to not charge volunteers a penny to volunteer. We have an even greater case for Rovers than we do for the general population to not charge fees.

Finally, let’s work on the organizational culture so that Rovers are seen as volunteers who also happen to be in an amazing leadership development program.  For marketing purposes, let’s brand and position it as such.

Making these simple changes moves Rovering in terms of our subconscious mind from the same pack as BCSV and into the pack of fellow volunteers and leaders, because frankly, they are.