Venturer Scouts are aged 15-17. These youth are in their final years of secondary school, where they slowly gain more responsibility and decision making power in their own lives. The Venturer program offers a safe place for these youth to explore how their actions and decisions can impact the outcome of an event, as well as mentorship on how to manage the additional responsibilities that they may encounter.
The Venturers form a Company, complete with executive roles such as the President, Treasurer and Secretary, with the exact number of executive roles changing depending on the size of the company that year. Unlike earlier sections, the Venturers do not focus as heavily on learning outdoor skills, because the youth who move up to the Venturer section generally have had plenty of practice with their camping skills. This doesn’t mean that they do not get to practice their skills – rather, they go on more advanced camping trips such as hiking expeditions, where they carry all their food and equipment in their backpacks and hike to a campsite.
Instead, the Venturer program focuses developing these skilled individuals into confident leaders and trustworthy teammates, through practicing soft skills such as public speaking, responsibility, leadership and especially planning. Venturers have complete control over their activities, making sure to follow the Plan-Do-Review cycle – they plan an event, execute it to the best of their abilities, and then review afterwards about what went well or how it could be improved. Outings in Venturers are usually from invitation by other Venturer companies, planned by themselves, or group outings.
For a normal Venturer meeting, the President will create an agenda that details what the Venturers will discuss that week. This agenda varies, but is influenced heavily by what events the Company is interested in doing or has already done: for example, a meeting after many activities may be a “debrief meeting” where they spend the entire time reviewing how the activities went. Otherwise, they may focus on planning an upcoming event, doing learning activities, or working towards obtaining an award.
Speaking of awards, Venturers have many awards that they may set as a goal. The official Top Section Award for the Venturer section is the Queen’s Venturer Award. The requirements for this award are similar to those for the other sections, but more difficult: The award requires a total of 24 levels of outdoor skill badges, 60 hours of volunteer work both in or out of the Scouts program, as well as a small service project. Another common award that Venturers may look to obtain is the Duke of Edinburgh award, which comes in three different levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. For Venturers who demonstrate the spirit of Scouting through community service, extraordinary Scouting participation and a solid system of personal values, the Medal of the Maple Award is also an option. The achievements that can be done by Venturers are numerous: how much they can achieve depends on how much effort they are willing to put in.