We Did It!
We Made Quality Council 

If you've ever set a goal and it seemed to just elude your grasp, you can relate to everyone on the council and district committees. All during 2004, they reached for that gold ring -- Quality Council and Quality District -- only to see it slip away. The necessary membership numbers were the frustrating factor.

Well! This undaunted group put on a full court press in the waning days of 2004, and guess what! We did it! We achieved Quality Council and two districts achieve Quality District.  That means we made our membership goal, balanced the budget and met several other criteria. 

What We Found During Our Membership Scramble

While working to meet our membership goal for Quality Council, we discovered an area of concern; some of the "new" members have actually been enjoying the program for some time without being registered. That's right, some leaders neglected to turn in a whole bunch of registrations. We will be addressing that story in more detail soon.  

More Than 75 Participate In Volunteer Planning Conference

More than 75 Scouters braved bitter cold temperatures to participate in the Volunteer Planning Conference Saturday, January 15 at Midlakes High School.  This conference focused on ways to improve programming and member retention. Many good ideas came from the conference, and you can expect to begin seeing some of them incorporated into the program in the near future.  We are currently processing those ideas and getting them to the appropriate committees for review. When completed, we will publish a list on these pages.  This is a vital conference that keeps council and district Scouters, as well as the professional staff aware of the needs of our unit scouters.

Click here to see more Volunteer Planning Conference photos.

Bowl-A-Thon

Where will your Scouts be on President's Day, February 21. Hopefully you answer that they will be enjoying a day at the lanes by participating in our annual Bowl-A-Thon.  It's a fun way to raise money, and a great way to send your Scouts to camp this summer.

Youthpower Dinner February 5

Honoree State Senator Mike Nozzolio

Honoree Scout David Allman

Our 20th anniversary Youthpower Dinner will be held Saturday, February 5 at Club 86 in Geneva.  At this gala fundraising dinner, David Allman will be honored with Scouting's National Medal of Merit for saving his sister's life, and Senator Michael Nozzolio will be honored with the council's Distinguished Citizen Award.

Our new web based ECHO lets us update the news as often as news happens. So, look here shortly after the dinner to see photos of the awards presentations and other highlights of the dinner.                                                                                                                                           

Click here for Youthpower Dinner planning meeting photos.

Scout Week Photos

February 8 is Scouting's 95th anniversary. We hope you are planning a super celebration with Blue & Gold Banquets, Troop and Crew Dinners, Courts of  Honor, Window Displays, Scout Sunday Services and other events.

If you would like to share those events with the rest of the Scouting community, e-mail photos to duane@thepancoastconcern.com, and we will put them on the photo gallery of an upcoming issue of the ECHO.

On A Sad Note

We were all saddened to learn that Arnold Schofield and Dr. David Conrey died recently.

Mr. Schofield, or Scho as he was known to his friends, served as Finger Lakes Council Scout Executive from 1973 til 1981. He was a 65 year veteran of Scouting and an OA Vigil Honor member. Scho's wife, Yolanda, is the artist who has supplied the drawings for the Youthpower dinner each year.