Leadership

Venturing has a long history of youth presidents running the Venturing program and providing the support to crews that in Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs are provided by adult volunteers and professionals. Since the creation of Venturing in 1998, the program has had a National Venturing President and Region Venturing Presidents for each region. It is a long standing tradition taken from the Outdoor Exploring program which preceded Venturing.

See the Southern Region Venturing Officers’ Association here.

Volunteer to serve on a Venturing Officers’ Association here.

As Venturing began to grow, a need for local groups of crews to share ideas became apparent and the idea of a Teen Leaders’ Council (TLC) was developed. The TLC was meant to be a group of Venturers and old Boy Scouts coming together for the good of the program. As Venturing continued to grow, and the program had enough members, TLCs changed to Venturing Officers’ Associations (VOA). The evolution from TLCs to VOAs came with two major changes. The first change was the exclusion of Boy Scouts from the group, second was an unwritten goal to be a model for Venturing crews and to plan and execute Venturing events and trainings.

Since then hundreds of VOAs around the country have been created, from district VOAs all the way to region-wide VOAs. Each of these VOAs has been different, but all contain the two similarities of a VOA president and involvement from the presidents making up the tier below them (Area VOA has Area VOA President and Council VOA Presidents).

As the Venturing Program is developing, the presidents are getting more responsibilities and thus began to require more support positions. The concept of youth leadership and VOAs has come a long way from the beginning of Venturing.

Venturing Standard Operating Procedures were recently released by the National Venturing Cabinet outlining the VOA structure from the crew to national tiers. This document includes the standards for a successful VOA and outlines the need for a VOA on every tier of the Boy Scouts of America as well as establishes a selection process for the hundreds of Region, Area, Council, and District Venturing Presidents. While there is a process for selecting the presidents, the responsibility of appointing the various support positions is delegated to the VOA president. This structure provides a fair and effective way for VOAs to be established and run so as best to pursue and fulfill the goals of the Venturers making up the VOA and to support every crew and Venturer in a VOA’s jurisdiction.