The general policy of the church, as i’ve heard it from multiple bishops in widely dispersed areas, is that a large chunk of a ward’s budget allotment in any given year is supposed to go to the youth. This makes sense to me.
In addition, most bishops try to be fairly evenhanded about the way the budget is allotted*—the same amount of money for the young women as the young men,** or allotting the same amount per individual to each of those groups.
So far, so good. But then there are what might best be called special allotments—and, in my observation, the only one of these for the youth is annual or biennial funding for the priest-age boys to go on a “high adventure” trip.
Yeah, it’s cool that the 16- and 17-year-old boys get to go white-water rafting a few hundred miles away from home, or camping out at a national park none of them have ever gone to, or traveling by horseback through the mountains. But what do the girls get along those lines?
Yep, that’s right—bupkis.
Incidentally, this is a recurrent theme over at the Spanish Fork 401st Ward blog—see, for example, their Young Men/Young Women activities calendar for this past April.
* This is spelled correctly, but doesn’t look like it is to me.
** Not that great of an approach when there are very different numbers of young men and young women, but it’s an easy way of dealing with ward budgets, and having seen ward budgets up close, i’m not going to begrudge making them easier.
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When I was in YW we had occasional Priest/Laurel high adventure type stuff. White water rafting is the only one I can think of now. I never went on any of those activities because I am the opposite of an adrenaline junky. High Adventure camp wasn't pushed among the boys my age. It could be because the boys were all, how should I describe them, oh, yeah, total and complete nerds. Plus High Adventure was expensive even then. I can't imagine what they have to pay for the boys to go today. Cub Scout camp this year was $150 a boy (Cameron, however, decided he'd rather get a guinea pig than go to camp).
To clarify about the cost of camps...
We (the parents) have to pay for it. It's not out of the ward budget. From what I have heard that is not common. Young Women camp is also expensive. The only camp thing parents don't pay for is Youth Conference. Several parents who have moved into the ward have been shocked that they have to pay the full amount here.
Actually, i get lots of Chinese porn spam, i just generally delete it (so that it doesn’t even show up as having been removed—i left that much in of this one so the following comment made sense) before anyone else sees it.
I think it’s a bot that goes around posting comments whenever there’s a post that might have to do with sex—so anything that has “sex” or “sex roles” as tags, or maybe even that has the word “sex” anywhere in it, is apparently fair game.
A ward i lived in once had the following: Girls’ camp, held annually, required a nominal payment for each girl with the rest covered by the stake; high adventure trips, held biennially, were completely covered by the ward. (Some of the costs for both of them were covered by the annual young men’s/young women’s fundraiser.)
Yeah, that seems fair, right? Especially since girls’ camp was local and high adventure stuff involved serious road-tripping.
We've been forbidden from doing ANY fundraising under our current stake president (who is being released in the morning after *10* years). Parents pay 100% of all costs. Which could actually explain why high adventure isn't pushed so much even now. Too expensive. So at least we're fair here I suppose.
(Actually, the NO fundraising thing is not true. We have to do the BSA Friends of Scouting thing. And do you know what we - with a son in Cub Scouts, two more getting there eventually, and a husband serving as the Wolf leader - did with our envelope? Ripped it up and put it in the trash. I will NEVER donate to Friends of Scouting.)
Our stake sponsors high adventure trips for young men and young women (alternating years). The stake puts in enough money to keep the cost per person down to $150-$160. Both groups have been white water rafting,done multiple night wilderness canoe trips, and hiking in the mountains. The trips are not identical. For example, the young men may complete a 50 mile canoe trip while the young women may do a 25 mile canoe trip and spend an extra day at a group campground doing day hikes or taking an outdoor painting class. We usually have about 20 young women and 25 young men go on the trips. The trips are for ages 14+.
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