Be prepared, to finally have female scouts at the Boy Scouts of America’s jamboree. For the first time in scout history, girls from the Scouts’ youth development program called Venturing will attend the festivities.
Over 40,000 Scouts and scout-leaders are scheduled to attend the national celebration, the event takes place every four years. This year the celebration will last from July 15 through July 24 at the Summit outdoor adventure site in southern West Virginia.
As I mentioned before, Venturing is the youth program that the ladies in question are apart of . Since 1998 the coed group (ages 14 to 20) takse part in a lot of physical challenges, traveling and general adventuring and that is why it’s a very popular organization within the teen-demographic.
John R. McGhee Jr., a Charleston attorney and board member of the Boy Scouts’ local Buckskin Council told the press, “Yes, it’s a big deal,” he added, “It speaks well for the future of scouting. It brings a whole new segment of the population into the program.”
With 2,000 Venturers in the fold, almost half are female. Pritchard said, allowing them to attend was “just the right thing for us to do,” adding, “This was just the next logical step for us to take, to give those members of our program an opportunity to enjoy what we have here as well, to drink the Kool-Aid and spread the word to the others who are in Venturing, to both young men and young women.”
Of course all of this is occurring weeks after the Boy Scouts of America decided to accept openly gay boys as Scouts. A move that has caused a rift in the community. Pritchard said. “The Venturers who were here last summer for our (dress rehearsal) weren’t here to see who was better, the boys or girls, but just to experience what there was for us to offer. Even with that little taste we gave them, everybody went away with a wow. We want to do more of that.”
