Advancement in Camp Settings

What this page is

How advancement at camp is supposed to be set up, drawn from the Guide to Advancement section 5.0.1.0 and cited on every item.

It is written for the council advancement committee, who own the procedures. It is also useful to a unit leader choosing a camp, or to a family looking at a merit badge programme and wondering whether the signatures will hold up.

The four things that go wrong

"Just show up and get the badge." The Guide names this reputation and says camps should not have it. Everything else on this page exists to prevent it.

Requirements get quietly adjusted to fit the timetable. No council, committee, district, unit or individual has the authority to add to or subtract from advancement requirements, and there are no camp-related exemptions except those for members with special needs. If a requirement as written cannot be completed at camp, it is done elsewhere, before or afterwards.

Camp staff are treated as counselors when they are not. Camp merit badge counselors go through both halves of the ordinary counselor approval, and resident camp standards require a letter from the council advancement committee approving them. Staff under 18 must not serve as, or be treated as, counselors; those with subject knowledge may assist someone who is one.

Partials are treated as a failure. A partial is the expected result of a week-long camp for any badge that needs longer than a week. The blue card has space to record and initial what is finished, and age 18 is the only limit on completing one.

How to read the graph

The eleven items in 5.0.1.2 are a list of things to decide, not a sequence, and are drawn that way: fanning out from the decision to establish procedures and converging on the outcome. Inventing an order between them would state something the Guide does not.