With youth leaders being elected every year, there is often an abundance of institutional knowledge that is lost with leadership turnover. Moreover, many young leaders new to their positions wish they could seek out answers, ideas, and best practices from the experience of others. To give Arrowmen this opportunity, Section E13 and E2 of the Eastern Region teamed up to create an inspiring idea-sharing event called FORUM.
I spoke with Section E13 Chief Evan R. regarding his vision for the event and to gather an inside look at how it went. Evan was proud to share that,
“the goal was to have a weekend where current and up-and-coming lodge leaders can gather in fellowship, and also have trainings that they can take back to their lodges and act on, leading to change at the most important levels of the organization, the lodge and chapter.”
Developing leadership at the most local levels has always been a successful method of building up leaders, units, and lodges, and a weekend spent with this goal in mind is a weekend well spent.
Evan commented that, “the event was a successful weekend with over 100 Arrowmen from all over Ohio and West Virginia attending, and facilitators from all over the country leading sessions of the ACT Conference along with other supplemental sessions.”
While the group gathered was from all corners of the sections, they were each eager to learn best practices, skills, and ideas while having some fun.
While FORUM was a new event this year, it has roots that go deep and spread wide. The event was inspired by a longtime event that the old Area 4 used to do called ALTC (Area Leadership Training Conference). With the recent section merger, the training conference rebranded the event as FORUM, named for the ancient Greek forums of antiquity. These trainings had multiple methods of success, including training through both lecture and roundtable formats, with a focus on idea-sharing and discussions.
This past year, 2021, was the first year they combined this longtime tradition with the ACT Conference. If you want to learn more, or maybe even attend for yourself, FORUM is coming up again in November of 2022! They already have over 100 Arrowmen signed up, so if you want to be a part of this amazing idea-sharing opportunity, head to: https://forum.oa-c4.org today!