Your Eagle Project

[Surfah]

I actually got my Star Scout rank or whatever it was. But by the time I entered HS about the age of 14 I was playing sports fall through spring and didn't have time for scouts. I still attended mutual and scouting activities as my schedule permitted but as far as organized scouts I didn't participate much aside from scout camps each summer, if it didn't conflict with any sports.

I had a scout leader who told me I'd never amount to anything because I wasn't an Eagle Scout. He was a scout nazi and he made not being a part of scouts easy.

[kccougar]

Fingerprinted and created photo ID cards for all the kids in our ward. At the time I thought it was a very unique project because my Dad was an FBI agent, and he showed me and my friends how to take the fingerprints. I've since heard of many other scouts doing similar projects.

[Green Monstah]

I was in an Eagle Scout factory of a ward during the summers in AZ. My Eagle Project was horrific. My family owns a ranch in the White Mountains of Arizona that often served as a place for scout camps, girls camps and family reunions. We had scout camp up there, and I painted and did some clean up work on one of the outbuildings that served as a lodge during winter month outings. My family benefitted far more than the handful of church and scout groups that used the facilities. Even worse, my scoutmaster claimed I was "wasting paint" and told me to simply supervise rather than work. So, I walked around and pretended to "supervise."

[NorthwestUteFan]

I was also in an Eagle Scout factory ward. Of the 17 boys who were Priests at the same time as me, 14 earned their Eagle rank. I shared my Eagle court of honor with my brother and my best friend.

I painted a widow's house and reglazed the windows. I solicited donations from the local hardware store for supplies, and a large paint store for the paint and thinner. That little white house had 70 years of accumulated paint so instead of scraping through decades of pink and yellow coatings, we just slathered white paint on everything. My brother had a cast on his broken wrist and spilled paint thinner down his cast. Got a nasty chemical burn.

My brother cranked up his ghetto blaster with the sweet, dulcet tones of GnR's newly released Appetite for Destruction. I recall being shocked to hear the f-bomb in So Easy, and again feeling a bit uneasy when my friend's older brother explained that Mr. Brownstone was slang for heroin.

[Donuthole]

I'm going to sound like a real BSA fan boy (which is funny, because I'm not), but I had a really great experience with my Eagle Project. I organized a sub-for-santa for a single-parent family whose home had recently burned down. The mother had also been laid off from work. She had [EDIT:] four daughters, ages 16, 13, 8, and 4 and the father had recently ran off with another woman.

Over the course of a few months I coordinated with the mom to gather lists of needs and wants for her and her daughters and then organized fundraisers and coordinated donations for the specific items. They had very humble requests, and I had to coax "fun" ideas out of them in addition to the needed items (e.g. one of the main things the older daughter had requested was king-size bed sheets, as she had an old king bed but had been laying down queen size flat sheets on it to sleep. Another daughter wanted a backpack so she could stop carrying her school text books in her arms to the bus stop, which was a mile from their house.)

On Christmas Eve, after the two youngest daughters had gone to bed, my dad and I delivered an entire trailer filled with stuff. All of their needs (clothes, sheets, towels, backpacks, etc.) and a bike for each of the 2 youngest, discmans and CDs for the two older girls, tons of small kitchen appliances and pots and pans for the mom, a TV and VCR combo (those were hawt!), a deep freezer filled with frozen meats and veggies, and enough canned food to feed an army for a month. We also delivered them a Christmas feast (Ham, potatoes, vegetables, salads, cinnamon rolls, etc.) which my mom and I prepared together.

To this day, I'll never forget the looks on the faces of the mom and the two older daughters as we kept making trip after trip to bring in more gifts and food. They could not have been more grateful, and I could only imagine how excited the younger girls would be to wake up to a house filled with presents. They called me the next day at about 3pm to thank me and said they woke up at 5am to open presents and that the had just barely finished. It was a great feeling to know I had helped make someone's Christmas special.

As for help, my parents were very hands off unless I requested help. Literally, the only help I had from my parents was 1) my dad helping me print the sign-up lists that I walked around the neighborhood to request donations (his 486sx was his baby, and we were only allowed to use it under his supervision); 2) my mom helping me cook the meal we delivered; 3) my dad helping me deliver the haul; and 4) my mom locking me in my room for an entire day of Christmas vacation and not letting me out until I had a hand-written thank you for every person who donated.

[Pelado]

She had three daughters, ages 16, 13, 8, and 4

How many daughters?

[Donuthole]

How many daughters?

One, two, four. I've been counting with my two year old too much lately.

[Pelado]

Sold snow and ice melt as a fundraiser

How much did you charge for the snow?

[il Padrino Ute]

I wanted to teach teenage girls how to water ski by spending a week at Lake Powell, but it was rejected. Instead, I put in the sprinkler system in the lot of the stake center that was being built. My dad was the contractor and I think he saw this as not only an Eagle Scout project, but free labor, so he killed two birds with one stone.

[Paperback Writer]

Like PAC, part of my restitution for not earning my Eagle rank is to work on my son's eagle scout projects. The other part of the restitution is to continually be called to serve in the YM organization as the "scouting guy" so I can do things like camp in the 100+ Texas heat.

Son #1's Eagle project was to re-shelve a very large food pantry in a homeless/half-way house. It included demo work with removing the existing shelves, installing the newly constructed shelves, patching up the walls because the scouts got too carried away with the demo, and repainting the entire pantry (which we had not planned on doing but the demo fiasco made it necessary). It took a crew of 8-9 people working 10 hour days over two days to complete. It was like three Eagle projects combined into one.

Son #2's Eagle project, which is currently in progress, is building and painting five large dog houses for the local animal shelter. Hope it's completed soon because I want my garage and driveway back.

Son #3 is now looking for his Eagle project. I'm hoping he'll repaint an outhouse or something like that.

[il Padrino Ute]

Son #3 is now looking for his Eagle project. I'm hoping he'll repaint an outhouse or something like that.

Painting fire hydrants is always good.

[wally]

Clothes drive for homeless refugees.

I did this as well, but for homeless in general, not just refugees.

[wuapinmon]

I forgot, when I was Scoutmaster, I had one kid actually get his eagle. His project was to get people to give bone marrow samples to be added to the national donor database. I wasn't there when they did it, but apparently it hurt like hell, and a lot of people didn't realize what they got themselves into when they agreed to it. My branch had 4 med school students in it; I think it was their idea.

He actually came back from college to turn in some paperwork a couple of weeks before his birthday.

[statman]

Two = the number of Eagle Scouts raised by my wife and I.

Two = the number of sons old enough to be Eagle Scouts (#3 is a 3 yo).

Six = the number of combined days in which their two Eagle Projects were completed prior to their 18th birthdays.

0 = the number of hours spent by son #2's troop/YM/YW in support of his Eagle Project - they bailed on 3 different occasions.

Really really pissed = what my wife was about the lack of support son #2 got from our ward's YM/Scouts. And she sure as hell let our Bishop know about it. He was very very apologetic. She told him - "oh that's alright. Son #2 has plenty of friends from school who were willing to help. He got it all organized with them and they actually showed up. We're glad the Scouts/YM leadership decided to help-out those who didn't have the leadership skills to organize and finish their Project on their own."

What she didn't know was that the Bishop's 13-yo son was one of the ones who got help at the expense of our son. Whoops...

[Babs]

what a great humble brag thread.

I'm missing the humble.