Give Upcoming Events a “Stamp of Approval”

After unveiling the design of the USPS Celebrate Scouting stamp last November, we are now preparing for the stamp to become available nationwide on July 27th! As part of this exciting day, a “First Day of Issue” ceremony will be held on July 27 during the 2010 National Scout Jamboree. More details will follow soon, but the event is open to everyone – attendees and visitors of the jamboree alike!

Even if you can’t attend the First Day of Issue ceremony, the stamp is a great avenue for bringing a 100^th Anniversary element into upcoming council, district, or unit events. And, you can even engage your local post office in the celebration. This new toolkit document on the YourSource explains how.

In conjunction with the stamp unveiling last fall, we encouraged Scouts, staff, volunteers – and anyone who wanted to join the effort – to bring even deeper purpose to the Scouting stamp by sending letters and care packages to military men and women serving our country overseas. We also included veterans in this effort. Let’s think about re-energizing this idea as the time for the stamp availability draws near.

Look through the upcoming calendar of 2010 activities for the council, districts and units. At one of these events, like a day camp, camporee, Scouting for Food, or other meeting and actives, would it make sense to highlight the stamp and organize a letter-writing or care package activity? There are resources available on the Celebrate Scouting stamp webpage to help. Your local post office can create a special postmark, called a “pictorial cancel,” that can be applied to envelopes with the Scouting stamp – making them more valuable to our members who collect stamps or Scouting memorabilia. Each council, district, or unit can create its own design for a pictorial cancel, and we explain more about how to do that in the toolkit document. For reference, here is an example pictorial cancel for a sample event taking place during the stamp’s first day of issue on July 27.