I have received an e-mail from Renae Madison regarding the summer camp for the City of Decatur and their desire for the activity one day to be geocaching. I am seeing if anyone in the GGA would like to volunteer to help. I am including a part of her e-mail. Is anyone interested in volunteering? Besides placing the temporary caches at the Decatur Rec Center, she is also suggesting placing three caches within walking distance at Sycamore Park, as well as get on MARTA and stop at Candler Park to get Horses Prohibited and at the Inman stop to get Inman Park History Cache, them she has suggested to hide another temp in that park, as well as another nearby park and also wants to either hide an additional one at Piedmont Park or hunt an existing one there. This is the first part of her e-mail. I paraphrased the last part above. I am not organizing this, just passing along the request to see if anyone wants to volunteer. Thoughts or volunteers. I'd like to tell her I'll get back with her next week some time.

Thanks for getting back with me. Our Dream Camp consist of 36 middle schoolers (grades 6-8) and 5 adults. Their theme for this session is Treasure Hunters. We would like to set up the geocaching as one of their field trips because we noticed that last year the kids really enjoyed it. This would be our first session so we would like to do this on June 12th which is a Friday. From my understanding last year Mrs Crompton and her brother facilitated this activity. Here are some details of the caches from last year to give you an idea:

Decatur rec center – we can put one, possibly two, temporary caches here. One in the front in one of the big trees (wouldn’t involve climbing). The other could be placed in the back – my only concern about this is when my brother and I were scouting out logical places, a neighboring dog came up to investigate. He was behind a fence and didn’t bark – just seemed curious – but you might not want a temporary cache there. Let me know what you think.

I'd love to help Geomuse. I'm off on Fridays.
Let me know.
DrPerp

Here is an additional e-mail I received from Renae. It sounds like there is more of a committment to place temp caches and help on Friday. I wish she had told me this from the beginning.

From Renae:
Here is a suggestion. You may want to get in touch with Laura Crompton about how she worked with us last year.

From my understanding she came in for a couple of hours during staff orientation (June 1-5 this year) to train staff and then came in one day during camp to help teach the kids how to use the GPS units and then again later in the week to help with our big “Treasure Hunt” and I sent you info on those caches already. That was on Friday and would be again this year.

quote:

I'd love to help Geomuse. I'm off on Fridays.
Let me know.

Just so everyone knows....I am not organizing anything with this. I am just placing this information in the forums in case anyone would like to volunteer to do this.

Last call....Unless I hear back from anyone besides Dr. Perp by Tuesday evening, I will respond that we are not able to help with the Decatur Summer DREAM Camp this year.

I would hate to see this opportunity to keep a good relationship with a local government be abandoned. In the past the SC members have taken on the responsibility to handle these request and then asked for help from the membership as did Mertat last year. It is part of the job that the SC representative's sign up for. See below.

GGA Steering Committee Responsibilities

~ It is a three (3) YEAR commitment for their term in office.

~ The SC does not govern, but rather serves its members through a process of consensus. As an SC member you are no longer an individual but the voice of six. Comment appropriately in any forums remembering you are a voice of six.

~ Work with other SC members in a consensus format to resolve any issues or concerns.

~ Demonstrate a positive attitude at all times when representing GGA.

~ Take a level headed and natural approach to all issues that my arise.

~ Listen and respond to issues, ideas and suggestions of the membership and pass the information along to the SC as a whole for action.

~ You should attend as many GGA meeting as possible but a minimum of (6) per year is required.

~ You will be required to set up, hold and manage two (2) GGA meetings per year.

~ Monitor GGA Forums. Manage any inappropriate or out of control discussions. Delete/move any outside advertising.

~ Work with local, state and federal agencies and groups to promote the GGA and Geocaching.

~ Perform all duties that may be assigned to you. Examples incluce: keeping minutes of the GGA Meetings, record keeping, New Member Welcome Letter, assistance with the GGA Newsletter.

~ You may be asked to contribute cash to cover short falls in donations to cover items like meeting space rent, GGA Board expense, prize expense or other ad hoc expenses. The GGA tends to run a positive cash flow for the most part though.

~ Keep all SC members informed of your actions.

If this is truly a City of Decatur sponsored event/program then we need the SC to take ownership as per the duties outlined in the GGA responsibilities and support our local governments activities as they relate to geocaching and not just throw the City of Decatur under the bus.

Trez - would you like to help?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: geomuse,

Nobody has thrown the City of Decatur under the bus. Nothing says the SC must do all of the volunteering. This effort would require at least 2 people dedicate 2 days to help with this. We talked internally among the SC before asking if any of the GGA would like to volunteer. None of us are in the position to do this.

By posting this to the forums, we are guiding and steering the GGA to volunteer to help. That IS our job.

We are still looking for some volunteers to help with this opportunity to help the City of Decatur youth and promote geocaching.

Hopefully some the cachers that live locally will be interested in helping out. If you know anyone that live in or near Decatur let them know we are looking for a few good cachers to help out.

I will give it another day or two before responding to the City of Decatur regarding our participation.

Please consider volunteering - I have done similar things and it can be very rewarding.

I have been debating with myself for days on whether to post my thoughts here. I don't want to discourage anyone from volunteering for the Decatur DREAM camp, but I think this is one that we should not be beating ourselves up over if no one is willing/able to do it. I assisted with this last year. I spent one day scouting out locations for temporary caches, a day taking a group of kids to caches, and more time prior to that in planning. And my "partner in crime" devoted more time than I did to this effort.

I've got to say that it was pretty painful. There were a few really nice kids, but most of them were not interested in the caching activities, didn't want to do it, and were vocal about their displeasure. The counselors were kind of disorganized and not real helpful. And I don't think that the folks running the camp really realized the amount of work that we put into it - at least they never (to my knowledge) expressed any appreciation when it was over. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and discouraged, and I don't think anything could ever convince me to volunteer to help with this activity again.

I hate being so negative about this. Maybe someone else would have a better experience. But if nobody steps up, let's not beat ourselves up over this.

Great Input Professor.
Mark this one as a no go and disregard my other post

Prof,

Thank you for the input. Based on the posts to this forum thread, I will contact Renae with the City of Decatur and let her know we do not have the volunteer resources at this time.

Thanks,
Robin