How Can You Help?
What is JTE? You may have heard the phrase JTE before or maybe you know it better as Journey to Excellence. JTE is the way in which we as a Lodge are judged by National and we are proud to say that we reached gold last year which is the highest you can be. This year we want to “Make Wagion Gold, again.” Just like in your Troop, which is also judges on JTE points, the Lodge has certain categories that we have to meet in order to achieve gold and these are not things that can be done by just one or two members of the Lodge, but by the whole Lodge working together to achieve greatness! How can you help? JTE for the Lodge is broken down into 6, yes 6 main categories. These categories are based on based on Finance, Membership, Program, Unit Service, Council Support, and Leadership and Governance.
The first category, finance, deals with the Lodge finishing off the Lodge year in the green with our budget and a donation to council or so much money per member. One easy way in which you can help out with this is every chance you get visit our Trading Post whether at the Banquet or an OA Weekend. The Trading Post is always making new patches and other mer-chandise for you to purchase. All of the money made there goes straight back into the Lodge’s budget which in turn helps us achieve JTE.
Membership is the second category in which we are judged based on our ability to retain members and to grow in membership. Along with that we are judged on whether or not we complete all of our Unit Elections and from those Unit Elections we are judged on whether or not we get the newly elected Ordeal Candidates into the Lodge. There are a lot of easy ways in which we can all impact this and that is by, first arranging your Unit Elections with Troop Rela-tions Chairman Jacob Gower, second is by encouraging newly elected Ordeal Candidates to go and take their ordeal, and finally by staying active yourself in the Lodge and encouraging your friends to come to weekends and stay active because the more members we have at a week-end the more opportunity there is for fellowship!
The third category Program is based on participation in Lodge events by you, Brother-hood conversations, Lodge service projects to the Council and community, and participation in Section and National events. Ways in which you can help with this category is by coming out to Lodge events and having a good time in fellowship and service with your brothers. If you are an Ordeal and you are eligible to take your Brotherhood then take your Brotherhood and if you are Brotherhood or Vigil encourage those eligible Ordeal members to seal their membership. In or-der to help with service projects you can come to OA service weekends and attend the Council’s Cub Scout days or participate in Wagion Community days. The final way to help with this cate-gory is to attend the Section Conclave and if you are on the LEC attend the SALLS training that the Section will be putting on. You can also attend NOAC, but there is not a NOAC in 2016 so you will have to wait a few years to do that.
Unit Service is the fourth category that is broken down into Unit visitations from the Lodge’s Promotions committee and when Units obtain the Unit of Excellence Award. They best way to help here is to talk to our Promotions Chairman Zac Lucullo and to obtain the Unit of Ex-cellence Award you must fulfil the requirements for this and submit the application to the Lodge.
Council Support is the fifth category which is broken down into Council Program Support where we as a Lodge must support the council in 5 or more events as part of staff which can be done at camporees and other council activities and through council camping support by having a camp promotions visitation from the promotions committee just like in Unit Services.
The Final of the sixth categories is Leadership and Governance which is broken into train-ing the Lodge LEC and Planning and reporting. If you are on the LEC you can help this out by attending the Lodge LLD course and the planning and reporting is done by our Lodge Chief to Council on an annual basis.
There are lots of little things that we can all do that we may not even think helps that has a great impact on JTE and the betterment of Wagion. So next time you are talking to one of your brothers encourage them to be active and buy stuff at the trading post and to get active in the Lodge because this is the stuff that we need in order to have a very successful start into our second Century of service and in our countdown to Wagion’s 100th Anniversary! Together with the help of you, the members of Wagion Lodge 6 the greatest and best lodge in the nation, we can “Make Wagion Gold, again.”!
