National Council of Chiefs Gathers Lodge Leaders

This year's national conference brought the return of the National Council of Chiefs (NCOC). At this event lodge chiefs and advisers from every represented lodge met with regional and national officers to discuss the future of the Order and the events coming up in the next few years. Each lodge chief and adviser present received information about the 2007-2008 national programs of emphasis including the 2007 National Leadership Summit and the exciting new ArrowCorps5 program.  ArrowCorps5 is a high adventure service project that will be held in five national parks around the country in 2008.  This project will allow Arrowmen to join forces with the U.S. Forest Service to help our environment.

Another exciting new program was the grand unveiling of the OA LodgeMaster program which is intended to help lodges track membership records and interface with Scoutnet to ensure OA members are also registered with their councils.  It was also announced that there will be a new Founder's Award video that will be sent to each lodge with the recharter packets this fall for use when presenting the Founder's Award. 

A new addition to this year’s program was the inclusion of group break-out sessions that allowed the participants to give feedback on what they see going on in the OA and to discuss improvements in National OA programs such as High Adventure, the National Bulletin, Lodge Leadership Development, the On-line Trading Post, NOAC, and the National Website.  Among the programs that were mentioned, the most mentioned was NOAC.  Participants of the NCOC were very vocal about future national conferences and how the National Committee would be promoting them.

The NCOC concluded with an award presentation for the National OA Service Grant recipients followed by special guest speaker Mr. Liston Bochette, a former summer and winter Olympian who is also an Eagle Scout. Mr. Bochette spoke on leadership in the world and spoke about his own experience of not always being the best but being the one who tried harder.  He spoke on his faith and how the Boy Scout program instilled in him the perseverance to continue pursuing his dream and never give up. 

Revised 8/5/2006