Boy Scouts of America  

The Boy Scouts of America celebrated their 100th Anniversary this year at the National BSA Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, and SME was fortunate enough to be a part of it.  As a large GEM outreach project, the SME Foundation had a booth as a National Exhibitor at the Jamboree.

SME volunteers and staff spent ten days braving the heat and humidity to educate the BSA Community about the importance of mining.  “Why do we mine?”  is the question that our volunteers and staff at the booth set out to answer.  The simple, and often quoted answer, as we all know, is “Because if it can’t be grown, it must be mined!”  We wanted to delve a little deeper than that, though, so the booth offered scouts, leaders and day visitors videos and hands-on activities demonstrating the minerals that are mined and processed and what products are created from them.  Booth visitors also learned about the different phases of a mining operation, from exploration to reclamation, and about careers in the mining and minerals industries. 

Over the past year, the Foundation has been working with the BSA on a proposal for a future Mining Merit Badge.  Visitors to the booth were largely in support of this idea.  We estimate that more than 15,000 attendees stopped by, and we urged them to impress upon the BSA the importance of learning about mining and its direct impact on all the items that we, as a society, use every day.  Although the Mining Merit Badge is currently still in discussion, SME created a patch commemorating the 100th Anniversary.  Scouts lined up along the entire length of the road during daily patch-trading sessions, and the SME commemorative patch was one of the hot-ticket items during these sessions!  Scouts eagerly snapped them up at every opportunity.  We handed out an average of 1,500 patches each day – a total of nearly 15,000 patches changed hands! 

What was especially exciting about this outreach event is the inclusion of the entire SME membership through Facebook.  Daily posts were made by SME staff so that members were able to stay up-to-date on all the daily Jamboree happenings!  We will continue to update the membership on the progress pertaining to the proposed Mining Merit badge.  It is our hope that the Mining Merit Badge will be approved and available for the Scouts to earn at the next Jamboree in 2013. 

The Foundation would like to thank our fantastic Jamboree volunteers – Bill and Lee Ann Beck, Richard Katz, Christopher Carroll, Joe Hirschi, Brian Shaffer, Dermot Winters, Mark Ellis, Pam Wilkinson, Lee Bray, Gary Buchan, Lisa Corathers, James Hedrick and Steve Richards – for their assistance, support and good humor!  Our participation in the Jamboree was a fantastic success, and we couldn’t have done it without all of you.  We truly appreciate your help.

We would also like to send a big thank you to the companies who sponsored this event:  Alpha Resources Inc., Rio Tinto Exploration, Rio Tinto Kennecott Utah Copper and Vulcan Materials Company.