Welcome. We've got a two partner today for our community connection. First up, we have the Boy Scouts of America and Cherokee Council and the right stuff is in the studio here Philip right, how are you doing there, young I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thanks for having us. You know, wanted to close out the year by saying thank you. It's been a wonderful, blessed year. And we just couldn't lead this year about saying thank
you to our community. Thank you to United Way, thank you to our Cherokee Council board, thank you to our scouters, thank you to our staff. It has been a great, blessed year. We wanted to just come and say thank you. You've got a lot to be proud of. And of course with the Boy Scouts, you know, there's a lot of humility, you know, and humbleness. But sixteen eagles, that's amazing. Yes,
yes, sixteen eagles this year. I mean a lot of hard work, a lot of service hours, a lot of volunteers helping our young Scouts get to that level of achievement in scouting. My goodness sake. You know, we talk talk about just how much Scouting has grown in our area, it's been it's been very very good. In some areas scouting has been all
but forgotten, but here it's thriving. Yes, I mean for the for the in Oklahoma, we the end of the year with a market share of two point seven seven Now the putt in perspective nationally the standards two percent, that's the national standard, where where as a councilor at two point seven seven percent, And to put in bigger perspective, first in Oklahoma, Wow, you're talking about ahead of Tulsa, ahead of Oklahoma City, and in our
national territory, which covers all of Oklahoma, comes to all of Arkansas, and also covers part of North Texas which includes Dallas and Longhorn areas. Where number two for the fifth year in a row, number two in market share. That is amazing. Yeah, the stats speak for themselves. And of course you can't go to a function without seeing the scouts are participating doing something.
Yeah, they're always present. Yes, giving back is of what what scouts do and it's just an amazing opportunity for youth to learn their way in this world by giving back. You know, you get so much, you receive so much back just by getting you do you hit a milestone. You're gonna hit a milestone in June. Tell us about this is exciting news. You know, we're seven one hundred and fifteen years and for the first time in the history one hundred and fifteen year history of this council, we're gonna
be able to offer national youth leadership training. This is an amazing, amazing level of training that our youth now will be able to have here. And I just cannot thank enough our community thinking that away for allowing us to have this course for our youth here. Now they don't have to travel to Arkansas or Texas or Tolsa to do what they can do it right here locally. For the first time in the history of this council, people are gonna come
here for a change. See what Bartlesville is all about. I like that. And you know when you talk about something like this, uh, it's really monumental. It's not something that's handed out like a participation ribbon, No, no harder. It's exactly and leadership training now more than ever, it's
it's what our youth need. And to see young scouts at a young age to have the opportunity to learn leadership skills, reallyship skills, how to skills, and then to be able to take that back to their units and then back into the community. Just an amazing opportunity will last a lifetime, it will. You know, we have a lot of people who like to follow, and maybe you kind of just stumble around blindly, and I don't think
that they realize just how valuable leadership plays a role in your future. I mean, if you learn that now, I mean you're you're gonna be miles ahead for the simple fact that not only do you learn how to lead, but you also learn what's expected if you have to follow exactly exactly. And and tell you we have such a strong core of leaders here already we do
in Barnsville. Just the leadership level from the course director which is Jerry Wells, assistant court director John Copeland, and then just the level of leadership around the two and then the youth recruit being recruited right now to serve on staff. We're is excited. We just couldn't be more proud of this opportunity. Well, it really sounds like a golden opportunity. Now, this is going to be right at the second week of June. Yes, yes, June.
And this is going to be something else. This really is going to be something else. Everybody, of course, they're ready to be prepared. As the motto, that's right, be prepared. Wow. We so a great year and you're starting off the new year with something big and a lot of momentum. What are we looking at as far as the spring is concerned? Here, we got a lot of things left on the calendar. Oh,
yes, yes we do. We you know next year we got our patron Dinner coming up in February. Yeah, we do that every we we have every year. We also have Scouting for Food, So February, every February we do Scouting for Food. And last this past year with our Scouts for Food program, our Scouts were able to go into the community and and give our community an opportunity and a chance to bring in food so we can help our food pantries and so forth. And every year. Well that is
great. People want to know a little bit more about the Scouts. How can we find out more and how can we find out more about this program? Oh? Just real simple all after just call out office or go to our website charity BSA dot org. That's it. That's it. Wow. Wait, hey, are you guys still taking checks for people? You know? We are? You know it's this is a wonderful time and of year giving, reduce your taxes. There's a wonderful time to do some any your
giving as well. And you can do on our website easily. Just hit a donate button, or you come to the office and they'll see you. Yeah, they'll see they'll see that, they'll see our staff. He never does. The only time he ever leaves is to come here and go home. Well, thank you very much, appreciate