California Inland Empire Council                      Monday Memo

Welcome to our December 6th, 2010 Monday Memo

Rummage Sale Benefiting Camp Helendade

Saturday, December 11, 2010
7:00 AM - 12:00 PM

The 2007 Slide Fire destroyed a number of buildings at Camp Helendade, including the newly built 9000 sq. ft. Pool & Medical Lodge. The building is now being rebuilt largely through volunteer labor and donations, but funds are needed to pay for county fees and permits.

You can help raise these needed funds by participating in the rummage sale by purchasing or donating cash or resaleable household items, clothing, books, electronics, small appliances, camping gear, and Scouting uniforms and memorabilia

Donations of clean, usable items are needed and can be delivered to the Jack Dembo Scout Center located at 1230 Indiana Court, Redlands, CA 92374 (Between Alabama & Tennessee Streets, south of Lugonia Ave).

Donation hours are 9:30 AM till 5:00 PM, Monday - Friday (except holidays) through Friday, December 10th.

For more information please email kevin.gustafson@scouting.org or call (909) 793-2463 ext. 139. 

Troop 641 & 205 At Irwindale Speedway 

The Advisor - Venturing Newsletter 

Attached you will find a copy of The Advisor (TQ Venturing newsletter) for your reading plessure. Inside this month's edition are articles about Leave No Trace training and referrence updates, articles about Cold Weather camping including Northern Tier expeditions, articles about changes to the Sea Scouting program (e.g. a new manual), an article about Youth Protection Training for Venture/Ship advisors, and of course upcoming training opportunities.

The issue with the subscription link is resolved, so please read The Advisor and pass it on to others that have an interest in Venturing.  If you have any interesting tid bites of information that you want to pass on to other advisors or want to see in The Advisor, please do not hesitate to email them to tqventuring@gmail.com.   Click Here for The Advisor

Thanks again for everything that you all do for Venturing,

Ryan Kleinvachter
TQ District Venturing Represenative

CIEC Scout's Major Project 

Dear Mr. Daniszewski: 

I would like to enlist the CIEC's support for a very important project begun by one of your Webelos. My ten-year-old son, Nicholas Jenkins, is in Lightning Patrol Webelos 2, Pack 128 (Arrowhead District) in San Bernardino. Nick is ten years old and was born with spina bifida. At the BSA 100th Anniversary celebration at Glen Helen Regional Park this past summer, out of 5,000 attendees, he was one of only two Scouts in a wheelchair. Despite his disability he has never let much get in his way as a Scout, as a student, or in any other capacity. He has participated in the Loma Linda Triathlon, has been honored as Member of the Year by PossAbilities of Loma Linda University Medical Center, was the designated kids' handcycle clinician at the Redlands Bicycle Classic, and has received honors from the Kohl's Kids Who Care program and the Sunny D Time to Shine Program. Nicholas was a quarterfinalist in the Sports Illustrated Kids SportsKid of the Year contest for 2010, making the top 35 out of more than 5,300 submissions nationwide. He has received two Outstanding Student honors from the San Bernardino City Unified School District and has been featured in local newspapers, TV news coverage, the USA Hockey website, and will soon have a "Headliners" spot in Boys' Life.

Nicholas has started the first-ever sled hockey program for disabled kids and adults in Southern California. He was seeking a sports program that met on a regular basis for kids with physical disabilities. Not finding one, he took the initiative to start one himself from the ground up. Sled hockey is an adaptive sport with rules that are basically the same as regular hockey. The players use modified sleds and two shorter hockey sticks with ice picks on the tips to maneuver on the ice. It is a Paralympic sport -- in fact, the USA National team took the gold medal at the Vancouver Paralympics in January -- but, until now, has never been played in Southern California. In May 2009 -- when he was eight years old -- Nicholas contacted USA Hockey, set up a clinic with a former Paralympian and a pro-level sled hockey captain, arranged to borrow a dozen sleds from USA Hockey, and got more than forty people out on the ice to try the sport. In May 2010 he set up a second clinic which got 85 people on the ice. The response was so strong that we decided to start a regularly scheduled program at Center Ice Arena in the city of Ontario. We have a wide range of players in our program, from age six up to sixty-two, with various disabilities: spina bifida, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injuries, amputees, wounded veterans, and so forth. Nicholas' program offers a fun new recreational *and* competitive opportunity for these folks, many of whom have never participated in a sport before because they had no options available to them. But so far we have had to borrow equipment from other programs in order to hold sessions, and then return the equipment so that those programs can conduct their own seasons.

Our main problem has been funding, and this is the easy part. SoCal Sled Hockey is in the running for a $25,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh project. These funds would enable us to purchase brand new sleds, sticks, helmets and pads for the entire team, and a season's worth of ice time besides. All we need is for as many people as possible to vote at least once per day to support our project. The top ten vote-getters in the $25K category will get funded; we got as high as #16 in November but could not bypass that point with our current voter base.

This is where we would like to enlist the support of CIEC. Would you be willing and able to spread the word to the districts, packs and troops within the Council to support this extremely worthy cause? If we could get the body of CIEC behind Nick's program, taking just two minutes per day to vote, we could easily break into the top ten in December. There are three different ways to cast votes each day:

1) Each e-mail account in a household can log onto http://www.refresheverything.com/sledhockey and click the "Vote for this idea" button once per day. The first time you log on, Pepsi will ask for your e-mail address and birthdate. This is ONLY to verify that the vote is being cast by a real person and not an online "bot".

2) Each cell phone in the household can be used to text the message 102873 to the number 73774 (Pepsi) once per day.

3) Each Facebook account in the household can use the Pepsi Refresh application on Facebook (http://apps.facebook.com/pepsirefresh) to search for "sled hockey" and vote once per day.

Each voter can vote for up to ten separate ideas per day, and there are some other excellent projects around Southern California that we are also supporting with our personal daily votes: Open Arms Community House in Grand Terrace, Canine Angels in Lakewood, and Casa Colina Outdoor Adventures. It's up to the individual voters to decide which projects to support, of course, but these are some fine ideas that will make a positive impact in our region.

Can we count on CIEC to stand behind one of its own and support an absolutely unique program that benefits an under-served population? Please contact me if you have other questions or would like more information. We hope to make it through the Pepsi competition this month, but we can't do it without the help of caring folks like you and the Council. Thanks for your time and assistance, and best wishes to you all in this holiday season.

Todd S. Jenkins
5930 Rogers Lane
San Bernardino, CA 92404
epistrophy@aol.com -- (909) 863-1000

News & Tidbits

Recently Completed Eagles

Positive Story
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The Hannukah Miracle

Hannukah is a wonderful celebration of faith and of God’s miraculous intervention.  About 167 B.C., during the Syrian-Greek occupation of Israel, Jews were killed and Judaism prohibited. The Jerusalem Temple was looted and an altar to Zeus was raised. The priest Mattathias and his five sons led a revolt. He was killed, but his sons recaptured the temple and cleansed it. Zeus’ altar was destroyed, and a new altar of incense was built.  They set a Menorah or seven branched candle stick set before the altar.

But although the Menorah was supposed to be a perpetual light, there was oil for only one day. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski says, they lit “the Menorah anyway, reasoning that it was best to do what was within their ability to do and to postpone worrying about the next day until such worry was appropriate.”

Thanks to God, that one day’s supply of olive oil burned for eight days. On the twenty-fifth day of ... Chislev, in the one hundred forty-eighth year, they ... offered sacrifice ... on the new altar of burnt offering. ... They celebrated the dedication. (1 Maccabees 4:52-53, 56)

Have a great Scouting week!
Yours in the Spirit of Scouting,

Joe Daniszewski Scout Executive/CEO California Inland Empire Council, BSA 1230 Indiana Court Redlands, CA 92374 909.793.2463, Ext. 120 877.732.1450 909.793.0306 Fax

Monday Memo is from Scout Executive Joe Daniszewski and contains his reflection on what is happening within the Council. The purpose of Monday Memo is to communicate information about the week ahead, to acknowledge the good things happening around the Council and to address specific issues that the Scout Executive wants to bring to your attention. Joe welcomes any comments, suggestions or recommendations on how to make this memo as helpful as possible. If you have something you want publicized in the Monday Memo, please send it to his attention c/o Monday Memo: Joseph.Daniszewski@scouting.org for Monday Memo Archives Click Here