Cub Scout Pack 564 - Lilburn, GA
Preparing young boys and girls to become responsible, participating citizens, and leaders.
Thanks, Pack 564 family, for supporting the 2016 Harvest for the Hungry food drive. This wouldn’t be possible without you!
And thanks to Lilburn for being so generous! Your donations of food will go to a good cause, the Lilburn Cooperative Ministry!
See you next year!
I‘m happy to announce that I have scheduled the next three hiking club outings, along with the service day project canceled in the fall due to rain.
The March hiking club event will be at the Vickery Creek Trail in Roswell, where we will combine the Outdoor Ethics service project with a nice hike followed by an optional picnic lunch. I will be posting a sign up for this hike so I can get a reasonable attendance estimate for the volunteer coordinator at the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area.
The April hike will be at Arabia Mountain, where we’ll do the 2-mile Rock Trail and Forest Loop.
And in May, we’ll head over to Cobb County to hike the 1.35-mile (2 miles on your scout’s passport) Environmental Trail at the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield.
Follow the links in the text above to the event pages for each of these events, where you’ll find full details.
As always, these plans could change depending on trail conditions, weather etc.
Summer hikes will be announced soon, but are likely to be the Island Ford Trail or the Sope Creek Trail, Sweetwater Creek State Park’s Red Trail and a more challenging (but still totally doable) 3.5-mile hike of the Sawnee Mountain Preserve’s Indian Seats Trail in Forsyth County. These will be in addition to the traditional pack summertime events.
This fall, I’m planning on putting the Songbird and Woodland Trails at Stone Mountain back on our list for the September hike (while dodging Yellow Daisy!!!). We’ll make a tradition of doing the Stone Mountain walk up trail in the fall as well, but probably November this year, with October held open for now for a potential hike during our campout.
I’ll try to get those hikes published by mid April at the latest.
If you have any trails you’d like to do with the Hiking Club, please drop me a line and let me know!
Please reserve time the next two Saturdays to participate in the Harvest for the Hungry food drive, Pack 564’s annual service project in conjunction with Troop 549, Pack 549, Mountain Park United Methodist Church and the Lilburn Cooperative Ministry to help feed our neighbors in need.
Den leaders have been asked to choose neighborhoods in which to distribute empty grocery bags on Saturday, Nov. 7, along with a note asking for donations of non-perishable groceries to go to the Lilburn Co-op.
Dens will return to those same neighborhoods on Saturday, Nov. 14 after 10 a.m. to pick up filled bags and deliver them to the Lilburn Co-Op, 5329 Five Forks Trickum Rd SW, Lilburn, GA 30047.
New this year, we will also be staffing booths at the Kroger at Five Forks and Rockbridge accepting drop-offs there. If you are unable to help your den distribute bags because of scheduling conflicts, this is a great way to be of service. We’ll be accepting donations from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8 and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14. You can sign up for a shift now at Signup Genius.
This is an important project that helps feed our neighbors in need. According to Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic-hunger relief agency, more than 106,000 Gwinnett County residents go without consistent access to food at least part of the year.
Additionally, it may help fulfill advancement requirements for some ranks.
Teaching respect for our natural world is a big part of what we do in scouting, from encouraging the boys to pick up litter to learning the finer points of reducing their impact on wildlife habitats.
This year, Pack 564 will make it easier for scouts (and scouters!) to learn more about outdoor ethics while earning the BSA’s Outdoor Ethics Awareness and/or Outdoor Ethics Action awards.
I’ll lead two activity-filled training sessions (dates are still pending) to reinforce Leave No Trace and outdoor ethics lessons the scouts have undoubtedly started to learn in their dens.
Then, on the morning of Saturday, March 21, we will have a pack-wide service day at Mountain Park, where all scouts will have an opportunity to put those skills to work, helping to clean up and beautify our own Mountain Park Park. I’ll be posting a signup for this event soon. Please sign up to participate by Friday, March 6 so I can provide an accurate count to the Gwinnett Parks system.
Participation in these events will count towards the Outdoor Ethics Awareness and/or Outdoor Ethics Action awards, which can be earned by all scouts and registered adult leaders.
Scouts and scouters who want to earn the Outdoor Ethics Awareness Award must complete two online quizzes, explain what the BSA Outdoor Code means to them and attend one of the training courses described above, or another session facilitated by a certified Outdoor Ethics trainer (For instance, the Northeast Georgia Council is offering training sessions at Scoutland for adults and scouts once a month except for March).
To qualify for the Outdoor Ethics Action Award, scouts must first earn the Outdoor Ethics Awareness Award, then meet the following requirements:
Recognition for the Outdoor Ethics Awareness Award is a patch that can be worn by scouts and scouters as a temporary insignia on the right pocket of the uniform shirt. The Outdoor Ethics Action Award is a name tag that can be personalized and worn permanently on the scout or scouter’s uniform.
If you are interested in helping your scouts earn these awards, you may want to begin folding some of these activities into your meetings, if you have not already done so. You will have until the deadline for May pack meeting awards to complete the requirements. Please consult the BSA’s Outdoor Ethics Awareness page for Cub Scouts for full details. Submit requests for these awards through TroopTrack.
Registered adult volunteers can also earn the Outdoor Ethics Action award, although the requirements are more complicated for adults than scouts. Please get in touch with me for details if you are interested.
If you have any questions, please give me a shout at news@bsapack564.org.
It’s easy to get lulled into a sense that everything is okay. After all, your kids go to bed every night in a warm home, in clean clothes, with full bellies.
But in households not very far from your own, that’s not at always the case.
In fact, according to the non-profit advocacy group Feeding America, 112,000 Gwinnett County residents — half of them children — spend at least part of the year unsure where their next meal will come from. And winter is often a time of increased need.
What’s the good news here? That you and your scout can help, of course.
Pack 564’s primary annual service project, Harvest for the Hungry, is rapidly approaching.
At the October pack meeting, your den leader will choose a neighborhood for your scouts to canvass, and on Nov. 1, boys from our pack, Pack 549 out of Mountain Park Elementary School and Boy Scout Troop 549 will fan out to distribute bags all over Lilburn.
Our pack is responsible for all neighborhoods north of Five Forks Trickum Road.
The pack has been doing this since 2006, according to Bradley O. Anderson, our pack’s chartered organization representative.
This is an important service project, a core element of scouting, and an opportunity for you to talk with your son about the importance of service, charity and goodwill. And the boys have fun, too.
So please make every effort to turn out on the morning of Nov. 1 and again a week later to help your boys unleash their inner heroes and help our neighbors in need.
If you have any questions, please ask your den leader or Julie Alcorn, the pack coordinator for this event.