
Boy Scout's Entrepreneurship Merit Badge - iamwil
http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-ENTR.aspx
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ErrantX
As a life long "scouter" (so far) I have to say scout badges are pretty hit
and miss. It depends on your troop and on the badge whether you learn much on
it.

(example; this would be useless in my local scout troop who's focus is
generally on water sports [canoing] and hiking/camping - i.e. the physical
stuff.

They would probably award it based on little effort (and yes, I did use this
"hack" to amass a huge quantity of badges in my time :))

Not that I'm dissing it :) just seems unusual for a Scout badge.

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pg
Not bad. 3c and 3d are more than a lot of startups do.

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derwiki
I think a properly run Eagle Scout project is 10x more beneficial than this
merit badge, but I appreciate the idea behind it.

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spking
I earned Eagle Scout in 2000, one month shy of turning 18. I agree with your
comment 100%. Earning merit badges is akin to preparing for standardized
tests; it's simply regurgitating ideas and concepts to fulfill a list of
requirements. It was the non-merit badge activities that I gained and learned
the most from, where there was less structure involved. Running an Eagle Scout
project introduced me to budget constraints, solving problems creatively and
managing a team. I don't know much about the Girl Scouts, but if they are
similar in spirit to the BSA I'll definitely encourage my daughter to
participate.

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leftnode
Without a doubt, Wilderness Survival was my favorite merit badge of all time.
I don't think it was Eagle required, but boy was it fun and I learned a ton.

But you're right, having to do my Eagle project taught me the most. Organizing
some 150 volunteers on New Years Eve was no small feat, but I felt a great
deal of accomplishment when it was done.

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rmorrison
I love it. I think people involved in boy scouts are more inclined to make
their own path and explore entrepreneurship. Many of the leaders involved with
my specific troop had interesting backgrounds in business and would have been
valuable assets for anybody interested in working toward this badge.

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whyenot
The merit badge sounds like a neat idea, but the BSA exclude gays, atheists
and agnostics, and to me, that taints everything else they do (girl scout are
much better about this).

 _Since 1991, openly gay individuals have been officially prohibited from
leadership positions in the Boy Scouts of America. A 1991 Position Statement
states: “We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the
requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the
Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not
provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” The BSA thus "believes that a
known or avowed homosexual is not an appropriate role model of the Scout Oath
and Law."_

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gscott
As a business decision, if you run an organization with males from 6 to 18 and
you have someone who prefers sexual contact with males it might not be a good
idea to send all of those people to the woods alone together... without baby
oil and Niel Diamond songs.

The Boy Scouts have enough problems with people who don't disclose that they
prefer males, hence an 18.5 million dollar lawsuit that the Boy Scouts just
lost. Further, imagine trying to get parents to have there kids join a group
with a gay leader or that might have a gay leader.

The religion part is very open, for example the Spaghetti Monster religion
would qualify so does believing in "Mother Earth" for whatever that means. I
was a Den leader for several years for Cub Scouts, an atheist dad and son
joined, it wasn't a big deal but I qualified them first by making sure they
didn't mind all of the "Duty to God" type sayings.

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minouye
Glad to see they've finally updated the merit badge pamphlets--maybe I'm
getting up there, but I seem to remember that in the late nineties when I was
pretty active, most of the content seemed to be 10-15 years out of date.

I never got this one, but I wish I did (considering I got such gems as coin-
collecting and basketry).

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brc
I've always thought about starting an organization which was just about
entrepreneurship for kids. I went through all the scouting levels, and I think
there's a lot of good things in there, I also think there's a lot of cruft
left over from when it was a thinly disguised military preparedness course.
Salutes, khaki uniforms, ranks, etc : all a bit much for me back then, and I
wouldn't put my own kids in it now. Of course it has probably modernised quite
a bit but I suspect a lot of it is still the same.

What I'd like to do is keep the good things about scouts : personal
responsibility, teamwork, goal setting and acheiving, respect for adults etc
and tie it in with an entrepreneurial focus : team building, idea generation,
production, marketing, distribution, legal understanding. The idea would be to
work on mini-projects a bit like they do on 'the apprentice', with the goal of
generating funding for both the club/group/whatever and of returning funds to
charity. There would also be aspects of social and environmental
responsibility tied in with the work. The projects would be fun for kids,
whether it is commissioning a line of t-shirts, selling flowers or doing an
e-bay drive.

My reasoning for this is that I think within the space of a couple of
generations, people have gone from usually-self employed to usually-corporate
employed, and as such get very little control over their lives. It's the
entrepreneurs that grow economies and improve lives, and yet it gets virtually
no attention throughout school.

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iamwil
As a person that came from a technical background, I followed the 'built it
and they will come' heuristic.

It's certainly effective for getting something done and out there. However, I
considered nothing about market or even who I thought my users are, or more
importantly, where to find them.

In this list, I probably would have benefited from the talk to customers bit.
Too bad there's no iteration of the business idea in the list.

Any of you out there ever get this badge?

