Squadrons & Community Involvement

[Spaceman3750]

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a cadet programs officer and am therefore approaching this with an outsider's perspective.

Should squadron community service be an integral part of the cadet program and squadrons as a whole? Right now the only outside-facing parts of our organization include ES and part of AE. If we are here to serve our communities (among other things), should service projects and other community-improvement activites be a strong emphasis?

Otherwise, some days it feels like we exist for the sake of existing, which is obviously pointless. Community service projects would give cadets practical, real-world applications of leadership and followership, and would help embed the unit into the community's culture (plus the face time would help with recruiting!).

[jimmydeanno]

Our cadet program IS the community service.  CAP's mission isn't to provide more helpers at Habitat for Humanity, bring food to the elderly, etc.  It is to provide a cadet program that will help prepare our nations youth to fill the nation's desperate need for good leaders, inform the local community about why the aerospace industry is important to the success of America, and provide a service when some sort of emergency strikes.

This doesn't mean that your squadron can't do some things to become more visible in the community, but if you run a good program, parents have a way of talking.  Your CAP squadron should be bringing "free" educational materials to the school system in your community, providing scholarship opportunities to local students, getting the communities youth excited about pursuing STEM related careers, etc.

If you want to pursue community service projects, try having your squadron hold community events that would welcome members of the community.  My last unit would hold a model rocketry day where members of the community would bring their kids, the cadets would help them build rockets, and we'd launch them in the afternoon. 

Another unit that I was in, hosted a AE camp for the base youth center during the summer.  It was a week long and had rockets, paper airplane contests, and a few other AE projects. 

Those are community service, and they fit within what our actual mission is.

[RADIOMAN015]

My experience is that the external media (especially TV) would tend to give better coverage of 'teenagers doing good things', such as cleanup after a tornado; toy drive for the local children's hospital, etc.   Our squadron has actually helped the Girl Scouts breakdown the deliver of cookies from tractor trailer trucks and load into various troops vehicles that drive up to pickup the boxes of cookies.   The cadets have also assisted locally at a veterans assistance/information activity.    We've also utilized the color guard team at some base military retirements.

Our tag line motto is "Serving Communities Above & Beyond".  IF our cadets work as a team accomplishing even those "community missions" as above, I would think we are showing by example what our cadet program produces. :clap:

In the examples above very little of squadron's funds were spent in providing this type of support (at most a little gas for the van).  When you start getting into activities where you have to purchase a lot of materials to support the public activity it can get expensive.  Maybe CAP at the national level should have some grant funds available for aerospace community project/awareness events that a squadron wants to conduct (could even be standardized). 

Surely the cadets training in emergency services might also be of media interest, BUT on AF funded training there may be some restrictions on what can be (a perception of what can be ) released.  We've had no luck with regional media coverage in the past on ES activities.

On the Color Guard/Drill Team competitions, since it (wing & region) is held on a secure military base, we have escorted the media in the past to cover the event, but it would not be possible to escort the general public on to the base.   Maybe a different non military, less secure, public accessible facility might be better and the general public could watch.
RM         
 

 

[lordmonar]

I think community involvement is a good thing...and CAP does promote that (through the community service ribbon).....but I don't think we need to add any more requirments to the cadet program as it stands right now (ala the BSA program that requires service hours for advancement).