In my Scouting career, I spent a lot of time as a training chair and in that time I came to understand that training is a continuing process for all Scout Leaders. It is one of the reasons that we have Roundtables and events like the 5 Star University of Scouting and other supplemental training opportunities. There are new things to learn all the time for Scout Leaders, and recently is seems that new stuff is coming to us at a faster pace.

This is also true in the area of Youth Protection Training - or YPT. YPT is required training for all leaders, and according to the YPT page at the national website (http://www.scouting.org/youthprotection), Youth Protection training must be taken every two years. If a volunteer’s Youth Protection training record is not current at the time of recharter, the volunteer will not be reregistered.

So how do the leaders in Three Harbors Council measure up? We have a little over 5,000 registered leaders and of those, a bit more than 3,000 (or 60%) are considered Youth Protection trained. Wow - that means the about 40% of the leaders in the council are not trained in YPT! This is actually not as bad as it seems. A number of these people have had their YPT training status expire since the last time they reregistered nearly a year ago, and my guess is that they will be redoing the training before the next time their unit recharters. But there are still a large number of registered adults who have not taken Youth Protection Training in 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, or even longer. Many of these folks are only registered at the district or the council level – committee people, commissioners, members at large, and merit badge counselors.   

 

What can we do to increase the level of Youth Protection Training in the council? Every leader can check on their own status by logging in to MyScouting.org and clicking on the link for Training Validation. This will show any Youth Protection Training recorded for you in the past two years. If you have trouble logging into MyScouting, click on the Youth Protection link on homepage of ThreeHarborsScouting.org. This will give you more information on how to login to MyScouting. If you find that you have no record of taking Youth Protection Training within the last 2 years, click on the E-Learning link to get to the Online E-Learning site and take the Youth Protection Training – it will only take about 30 minutes of your time. And while you are there, check out any other training you may need.

 

My hope is that in we can get our level of Youth Protection Training much closer to 100% in the near future.

Dick Kroll,

Council Commissioner