Journey to Excellence is Scouting America program to help Packs, Troops, Crews, Ships and Posts to plan, monitor and evaluate their performance and their ability to serve youth. There are specific criteria for the unit to plan and accomplish.
Journey to Excellence is a number of performance measurements that are known to make for a successful Scouting program. It is designed as a planning tool. The Pack, Troop, Crew, Ship, or Post leadership reviews the performance measurements and makes plans to achieve as many objectives as possible. There are four major areas that Journey to Excellence focuses on, planning and budgeting, membership, program, and volunteer leadership. Each of the four major areas has specific and measurable objectives. These standards are reviewed each year and if needed, revised.
Each objective has a point value and uses a balanced scorecard approach. This allows for excellence in some areas and effective in others and still have an excellent program. Each of the performance standards has three levels of achievement, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Achieving gold gets you maximum points. Adding up all the points for the performance standards gives you overall total points that equal Bronze, Silver, or Gold.
Achieving bronze is delivering an effective program and should be celebrated. Silver is considered to have an excellent program. Gold is exceptional and is difficult to achieve year after year.
Please share with us your thoughts about JTE and any suggestions that you have for improvement. Please sent them to jte@scouting.org
