1. Have a district advancement committee of 8 - 10 volunteers
2. Immediately begin to recruit local counsellors for the 128 Merit Badges
3. Have by April 1st an initial list of Merit Badge Counselors for at least 50% of the offerings and have that list in the hands of our unit leaders..
4. Have by September 1st a complete list for all badges with all counselors registered in our council.
5. By February 20th have the new set of Merit Badge pamphlets presented to the Flint River Regional library. This set of books was provided by the Kiwannis Club & Doug Hollberg and will serve as a resource for both area scouts and our counselors. As we identify local counselors there names will be placed in the cover of each book. The collection would be located in the children's section shelves of the Flint River Regional library.
6. Have a district advancement newsletter which we will publish four times a year to area troops and packs promoting advancement opportunities, the library book collections, additions in our counselor corps and other advancement news.
7. Using the district copy of the unit advancement report provide the troops and the district committee a clear picture of how our units are doing on the advancement front. This will provide the commissioner staff with vital information on potential areas of weakness. We can get snap shots on what the most popular cub activity and troop merit badges are. We can find out what percentage of registered scouts in each unit are advancing and we can insure that our units are conducting at least four board of reviews and court of honors a year.
8. We hope to take our two long successful Merit Badge clinics (Textiles and Stamp Collecting) and expand on that concept with at least two additional clinics.
9. Hopefully with Ed being involved in both summer camp registration and the district committee we think it would be interesting for everyone to find out how many of our camp badge completions pass unit board of reviews and how many of the partials earned at camp get turned into completions in the months following camp.
