The Venturing Silver Award is available to
all Venturing youth members of the Boy Scouts of America. Its purpose
is to provide a pathway for personal development; encourage Venturers
to learn, grow, and serve; and recognize the high level of achievement
of Venturers who acquire Venturing skills.
Requirements
Venturers must be proficient in emergency
preparedness (including standard first aid, CPR, and Safe Swim
Defense); participate in Ethics in Action; complete the new Venturing
Leadership Skills Course; earn the Venturing Gold
Award; and earn at
least one of the five Venturing Bronze
awards.
Procedure
Venturers work with their Advisors to
establish a plan of action for earning the Silver Award. Venturers can
choose to work on the requirements alone or with other Venturers as in
a crew activity. Venturers can work on requirements in the Bronze
Award program, Gold Award
program, and Silver Award program simultaneously. They could also work
on each program separately. It's up to the Venturer and Advisor as to
how they earn the award. After completion of all requirements, the
Silver candidate will go through a formal review with Venturers and
adults from the crew.
Details:
Earn at least one of the five Venturing
Bronze Awards.
Earn the Venturing
Gold Award.
Emergency Preparedness
Introduction
Being prepared has always been
one of the key tenets of Scouting. Being prepared continues to be
important for today's action-oriented, can-do-anything Venturers.
Venturers must be prepared to take care of themselves as well as be
ready to serve others when called. When faced with an emergency
situation, people react in various ways. Some people leave, some
panic, some do nothing at all, and some respond. Venturers should be
prepared to respond!
Requirements:
- Become certified in Standard First Aid or
equivalent course. If you choose the American Red Cross
Standard First Aid version of the course, the curriculum
includes how to recognize an emergency and overcome the
reluctance to react; how to recognize and care for breathing and
cardiac emergencies in adults (training to care for infants and
children is optional); and how to identify and care for
life-threatening bleeding, sudden illness, and injury. The
course is approximately 6½ hours. Your Standard First Aid
certification will expire three years from the date of issue.
Your CPR certification will expire one year from the date of
issue.
If you hold an unexpired certification in this or a higher
course, you can receive credit for this requirement. However,
you must be currently certified at the time of your Silver Award
crew review. You are encouraged to get certified as soon as
possible and stay certified. For this requirement, you are not
required to seek a higher certification, but you are encouraged
to get certifications in higher-level course such as First Aid
-- Responding to Emergencies or Emergency Response. You will be
even more prepared.
[Note: If you need help
finding an American Red Cross instructor in your area, call your
local Red Cross chapter. For literature, call toll-free
1-800-667-2968).
- Become certified in CPR. You can take a
stand-alone CPR course or take it as part of another course such
as Standard First Aid. Please remember that CPR certification
lasts for only one year, at which time you will need a refresher
course. Like Standard First Aid,. it is good to always be
current in your CPR certification. You most likely will get an
opportunity to use your skill in saving a life.
- Complete the BSA Safe Swim Defense
training course. In this course, you will learn how each of the
eight points of the Safe Swim program affects safe crew swimming
activities. You will learn that qualified supervision and
discipline are the two most important points, upon which the
other points rely. You will also learn how to set up a safe swim
area. Any BSA aquatics resource person, your crew
Advisors, or other council-authorized individual can provide the
training course for you. Use Safe Swim Defense, No. 34370, and
Safe Swim Defense Training Outline, No. 19-417.
- Either lead or participate in a group
swim using BSA Safe Swim Defense. Swimming can be a great way
for you and your crew members to stay fit and to just have fun.
To ensure that you and your friends will continue to do just
that, always insist you use Safe Swim Defense.
Leadership
Introduction
Leadership is a cornerstone of
the Venturing Silver Award. As you work on the Silver Award, you
will experience many new things, learn many new skills, and learn to
serve others. But to effectively take advantage of all those
newly-learned skills and experiences, you must know how to
effectively lead. It is true that some people are born with some
natural leadership ability, but the best leaders develop leadership
sills and continue to expand and hone these skills throughout their
lives.
We all get the opportunity to
be followers and leaders. It takes skill to be a good follower, too,
but in this section, you will concentrate on developing leadership
skills and implementing those skills as a leader.
Requirements:
- Successfully complete the Venturing
Leadership Skills Course.
- Successfully serve for at least six
months in an elected or appointed crew, district, or council
leadership position. Since leadership is a form of service to
others, don't be afraid to ask your followers, those you serve,
how you are doing. If you don't have an occasional assessment of
your progress, you might not improve. Learn to value the opinion
of others. This must be in addition to the leadership
requirement in the Venturing Gold Award.
Ethics in Action
Introduction
Another cornerstone of the
Venturing Silver Award is learning through experience. While you are
working on your Venturing Silver Award requirements, you will have
many experiences. You will enjoy experiences that let you interact
with your peers, learn decision-making skills, evaluate and reflect
so that you can learn from your successes and failures, and discuss
conflicting values and form your own value system. Experience can be
a powerful learning tool!
Requirements:
- Participate in at least two Ethical
Controversies Activities from chapter 9 of the Venturing
Leader Manual. These activities are scenarios that will put
you and those who do the activities with you into challenging,
problem-solving situations. In a constructive way, these
activities will help you develop the following personal skills:
- Promoting productive conflict
resolution
- Polite disagreement
- Listening to new ideas
- Understanding other people's
perspectives
- Working toward a solution that the
group involved will support and implement
- Either organize and lead, or help to
organize and lead, an Ethics Forum for your crew, another crew,
school class, or other youth group. An Ethics Forum is simply
another, more formal, way of gathering information about ethics.
You will invite two or more adults to form a panel for your crew
or group to ask questions about ethics in their personal or
professional lives. You can even invite adults related to your
crew's specialty; if you are in a sports crew, you could invite
a sports doctor, a coach, and a professional athlete. You can
even invite guests such as family members and friends to join
you. You can even use the information gathered from the Ethics
Forum to develop your own Ethical Controversies activities.
Silver Award Review
After completing all
requirements, the candidate should prepare evidence of completion of
work. It should be submitted to the crew Advisor along with the
completed and personally signed Silver Award Progress Record and
Application. The crew president, in conjunction with the crew
Advisor, should then appoint a review committee of four to six
people including Venturers and adults. The review committee should
review the candidate's written documentation and interview the
candidate to determine whether the candidate complete all work and
grew as a result of the pursuit of the Silver Award. The application
is then approved by the crew Advisor and crew committee chairman and
submitted to your council service center.
The Medal
The Venturing Silver medal features a
superimposed eagle over a compass dial. It also has a red, white, and
blue background behind the eagle. The medal is worn suspended from a
green and white ribbon, which is suspended from a silver Venturing
bar. A cloth knot is also available.
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