HOHENFELS, Germany -- While most people know that part of being a Boy Scout is earning achievement badges, many may not know that adult Scoutmasters can earn badges as well. Hohenfels' own Troop 303 adult leader Kreg Schnell recently completed the highest level of adult training in Boy Scouts, receiving the coveted Wood Badge.
Schnell participated in the Trans-Atlantic Council's Wood Badge course at Frankenkaserne near Ansbach, Germany. This adult leadership course includes intensive team building and problem solving exercises that force participants to work together with a mix of nationalities, genders and skill levels.
"The course is supposed to push participants," Schnell said. "Many talk about not getting sleep all week, or how their group didn't get along."
And it doesn't end when the course is over. Participants are then tasked with the completion of five self-appointed projects designed to improve the scouting program, and they are allowed 18 months to complete them. In any given Wood Badge course, up to 50 percent of participants fail to follow through.
Two of Schnell's tasks directly benefited Hohenfels. For one of his tasks, he helped facilitate three conservation projects around the post, including the construction of bat boxes, an "insect hotel," and a trail maintenance project for Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation.
Another task focused on international scouting, and Schnell helped open up new opportunities for Hohenfels youth as they participated in events with various German scout troops as well as a gathering that included 5000 scouts from all over Europe. This annual European scouting campout encourages diversity by forcing scouts from different countries to live and work together over a four day weekend.
Schnell completed his five tasks within 11 months, aiming to receive his Wood Badge during a 75-mile hike through New Mexico's Rocky Mountains with scouts from troops all over Europe.
On the last day of the trek, atop the 9,000 foot peak known as "The Tooth of Time," many scouting units gathered to watch the sunrise. In the predawn darkness, two blasts from a kudo horn shattered the silence.
The kudo horn is one of the symbols of Wood Badge, along with the wooden beads, turks head woggle, and the Gilwell scarf with the Maclaren Tartan. Each symbol carries a meaning dating back to the first Wood Badge ceremony in 1919.
Former Wood Badge recipient Teo Perez, a scoutmaster from Troop 141 in The Hauge, Netherlands, conducted the ceremony. Another adult advisor, Dano Lister, spoke to the gathered scouts about the responsibilities of Wood Badge and the commitment to life-long learning and continued leadership.
Schnell's son, Marius, also spoke, asking the gathered scouts if they had a hero or someone to whom they looked up to and admired. Marius said his hero was his father, and he went through the twelve points of the Scout Law describing how the older Schnell embodied these values and used them to guide his life and positively influence the lives of others.
The goal of Wood Badge is to engender a bond and a commitment to the scout movement and to help improve the program.
"Even if only 15 of the 25 people who started the course with me finish their tasks, the potential of 25 people times five items that should make the program better, is a huge boost to scouting," Schnell said. "Next year, I think we'll have 48 participants -- that's 240 make-it-better possibilities and if only half get done that's still huge."
Next year's program will be held at Gilwell Park in London, where Sir Robert Baden-Poweel conducted the first Wood Badge course almost 100 years ago. Schnell has already signed up as an instructor.
"It's part of giving back to those who help us along the journey of life," he said.
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