We had our pack’s Blue and Gold banquet this past Saturday night, and afterwards people kept telling me it was our best one yet. And not because of my silly jokes or anything else I did except for one simple thing: I didn’t say no to change (and I even insisted on some of it). In the past, we have held a raffle throughout the night so that every boy won a prize. That’s eighty something donated prizes, so most of them were pretty minor and it takes forever. Last year I asked our committee to end the raffle (something all the den leaders were in agreement with). Somehow it got put back in. This year, the lady in charge volunteered pretty much just so that she could end the raffle. But that wasn’t the end of her changes – we also flipped the order of the meeting. In the past, we had the pack meeting, then we ate, and then we had our entertainment. The whole thing took 3 hours. This year, we had the entertainment first — a juggling clown magician — then we ate, and then we had the pack meeting. We were done in two hours (and there was much rejoicing). I admit I was nervous at first about following a professional, but the reality was that the kids were happy after the pro, and even happier to have a full belly before putting up with me.
I suppose the thing I’ve done best as Cub Master is to let go and let our volunteers do what they want to do. I’m a coordinator, not in control. It works wonders for getting parent participation and it works wonders for the overall program – the creativity and the dedication has been phenomenal. It also makes my job easy — most people like to implement their own ideas and work harder on them.
