Community Good Turns
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Community Good Turns have a very large citizenship training value. The civic responsibility that each of us has to our community is more clearly understood through practical Good Turns to that community. So helpful have Scouts been in this connection that hundreds of cities are dependent upon Scouts to aid in various civic enterprises. Here are numerous concrete suggestions as well as a few actual "Good Turns" quoted
What better Patrol project, than the Christmas Good Turn?Under Community Good Turns come possibilities for service to the fire and police departments, also aiding conventions. Here are some of the things done to aid the fire department:
The police departments have called upon and been served by Scouts as have the fire departments. In one city the Boy Scouts were commissioned as an auxiliary police department. the mayor and police of the city were constantly being besieged with complaints in "bean-shooter season" about wanton killing of birds, smashing of windows and other juvenile offenses. Some indignant citizens wante these small ruffians severely punished, even sent to reform school, but the mayor shook his head and thought of another way to go to work to cure the evil which was real enough, he admitted. He sent for a Scoutmaster and some Patrol Leaders. "I want you boys to be my special police," he said. "There are some bad boys in this town and I want them straightened out. We don't want to arrest them and make criminals of them. We want them to grow up into good men, setting the same kind of mark you boys are reaching for. You lads can do more with them than all the police on earth. Keep your eyes open and report to me every once in a while If you run across a boy you can't do anything with let me know his name, and I'll see if we can't help you to get him in line." The boys gladly took the assignment and said they'd do their best to make good. Here are some other Good Turns for Police Department.
Conventions have found Scouts most valuable, making possible, through their volunteer service, more effective programs.
Some Quoted Community Good Turns:
And FinallyGood Turns supply the basis and motive for special campaigns for the community. Following is how one Community Good Turn was organized into a great city event to the tremendous benefit of all parties concerned. It is given here in full merely to suggest what may be done with a Good Turn idea when it falls into ingenious hands. It is one kind of a Good Turn to gather a few tin cans, it is a different kind of a Good Turn to clean up a city. "CANNING THE CAN"How the Boy Scouts of Dubuque Did ItFruit growers say of their produce, "We eat what we can and what we can't we can," but in Dubuque, Iowa, there is a group of Boy Scouts who go the fruit men one better. Their slogan is "We eat what they can when they can't and then can the can!" No matter how carefully its original contents were prepared and sealed, the empty tin can is a real menace to health when left lying around. The Boy Scouts in Dubuque, however, backed by the local Board of Health, the Commercial. Club, the newspapers and everybody interested in the "Spotless City" idea, ordained that the cans should pass. Prizes were offered for the boys bringing to a municipal can pile established on a vacant lot near the business center of the city, the largest number of old tin cans. A checker was stationed at the lot each day during the six-day "Tin Can Drive" to count the empties and issue receipts for them. Every boy in town, whether Scout or not, was eligible for the competition. During the week the menace of the empty tin can was preached in the school by special health lecturers provided by the Board of Health and other interested organizations. Scouts paraded the city with such slogans as "Can the Can." "The Tin Can is the Mosquitoes' Home--Can It," and "Clean Up Dubuque--The Boy Scouts Will Show You How." The large show window of the Local Scout Council's office was fitted up with a mosquito hatchery. This was made of cheese cloth, the front edges being pasted to the window, the glass of which furnished the outer side. At the start the hatchery contained three glass jars of dirty water, two jars containing water from undrained sloughs within the city limits and the other water taken from tin cans in one of the unsightly back alley piles. This slough water developed all sorts of animalcules, the jar of water taken from the tin cans producing the most mosquito larvae or wrigglers; which developed into a swarm of full sized mosquitoes, including the malaria variety, in a few days. This exhibit naturally attracted a great deal of attention. The city newspapers devoted considerable space every day to a story on the growth of the can pile and the progress of affairs of the mosquito hatchery. Every night the can pile was covered with oil and then lighted in order to destroy any organic life which might be developing. After blazes died away all cans which still looked suspicious were treated to a genereous dose of chloride of lime. The campaign closed on Saturday noon with more than 56,000 cans accounted for. The pile represented every known variety of tin can from the little pepper box to the old tin wash boiler. The champion collector held receipts for 14,165 cans--a wonderful total for one boy--and the second boy had 6,793 empties to his credit. But that didn't finish the cans. They had to be smashed so no water could lie in them again to tempt home hunting skeeters. The boys of the town were therefore invited to a can smashing bee on Saturday afternoon. Dozens responded to the call and soon the 56,000 cans looked like a collection of metal pancakes. One boy smashed fifty almost beyond recognition in five minutes by stop watch! Trucks from the street cleaning department then hauled the remains off to the city dump. Here are a few suggestions for other community campaigns.
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Last modified: October 15, 2016.