Friday, June 14, 2013

Balloon Ball and the Crew Officer's Seminar

Thursday's Venturing Forum centered on "How to conduct a Crew Officer's Seminar."  We started out by playing a game called "balloon ball."  The object of this game is to score as many goals as possible
in the time allowed.  We had 3 minutes to blow up balloons and touch the the opposite wall with the balloons.  After the first balloon was popped by one of the opposing teams, we started keeping score and then it got competitive.  We got kind of noisy, but no one poked their heads in our room when we started popping each other's balloons to see what was happening.

How did a simple activity turn into such a competition and how does a game of balloons relate to conducting a Crew Officer's Seminar?  We took time to reflect on the activity and share our thoughts.  I'll leave it up to you if you want to try similar games to get conversations going or to help facilitate a seminar, a.k.a. a Yearly Planning Retreat, but activities like this are extremely simple, inexpensive and effective ways of enabling young men to lead.

We were reminded that yearly planning is driven by interests.  Interests can be discovered through the Venturing Activity Interests Survey.  Busy young men with jobs and other interests are drawn to activities that meet their needs and interests.  Needs may be met by less frequent but better planned activities planned and led by the young men.