Communication Merit Badge

Click here for the official guidelines from the Boy Scouts of America for the Communications Merit Badge.

Communication is a significant part of the human experience. It impacts everything we do. This includes our pursuit of goals, such as with Merit Badges, academic achievement, and professional success.

Communication is generally processed by the human brain in two ways: 1) receptively, and 2) expressively. Receptive language skills are those necessary to understand what other people are trying to communicate to you. Expressive language skills are those necessary to express your thoughts and ideas to others in ways that allow them to understand you. A combination of receptive and expressive language skills are used to participate in communications with others.

Whether you are building a self-watering container garden for another badge or just for your own use, the need to communicate with others as you build, manage, and benefit from your garden is imperative to its success. Simply reading about how this badge and self-watering container gardening relate to each other is a form of communication. By listening to this audio recording of this page’s text, you are also engaging in a form of communication.

This badge suggests that, as one possible option, you keep a log for a day of your communication activities. Consider logging your communications today, including reading and listening to the content of this page should you decide to pursue this aspect of this badge. In the alternate, you can keep a three-day journal of your listening experiences. Should you choose this option, listening to the audio recording of this page’s content could be included in such a journal. Another option is to share personal stories in a small-group setting, which is something that tends to naturally occur when people get together to work on something (such as a small container garden).

Another option for this badge is to choose a concept, product, or service and build a sales plan based on its good points. If you or any other Scouts you know are pursuing the American Business Merit Badge, then your sales plan could be in support of the business that must be operated for at least three months for the American Business Merit Badge.

You must also give a five-minute speech at a meeting or in front of some other group. In choosing the topic of your speech, consider presenting on the issues of nutrition, health, organic gardening, or some other topic related to self-watering container gardening.

For this badge, you must interview someone, then prepare and deliver to your counselor an introduction of the person as though he/she will be a guest speaker for your troop or crew. You must also show how you can invite this person to speak. For Scouts interested in interviewing anyone from KPS4Parents about him-/herself and our Learn & Grow Educational Series and showing how such a person could be invited to speak to your troop or crew either in person or via Skype, please use our Contact Us form to inquire.

When you attend a public meeting as required by this badge, consider attending local events that address issues such as agricultural land use, pollution that stands to impact local agriculture, food supply issues in low-income neighborhoods, and issues of this nature. Where this badge calls for you to develop a plan to teach a skill or inform someone about something, consider teaching younger Scouts how to build their own container gardens for badges or group projects, or consider conducting workshops for interested members of the community to teach them how to build their own container gardens for their homes.

One option for this badge is to create your own web page or blog about a topic of interest to you. Consider building your own blog or site on a free hosting site, such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com about your container gardening experiences. You are welcome to link to any content on our Learn & Grow Educational Series site to support your own container gardening-oriented content.

Another option is to create a brochure, newsletter, flier, or some other printed material, which you can always do on topics pertaining to container gardening. If you or another Scout is pursuing the American Business Merit Badge, any web and/or print materials you create could be used as sales and marketing material for the business that a Scout must operate for at least three months as part of the American Business Merit Badge. See also the Entrepreneurship Merit Badge.

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