Observation and Thoughts.
I would like to make a few points about what I've been reading in this forum. It saddens me of the distain that I see for the EAA and its employees in this thread. All over the concerns of the Youth Protection policy which for the most part are valid however the reaction to them I feel are too extreme. It has resulted in useless mudslinging and jabs causing discontent among this group of members. And the more members that read this may also become discontent with various members on this forum and then eventually with EAA as well. Is this really productive?
I don't feel that the senior leadership team lays awake at night wondering how they can make the lives of the membership more difficult nor do they have "low regard" for its membership. As you all have valid concerns about the policy and the way it was implemented, EAA also has concerns for our youth and the overall health of the organization for which we are all a part of. Other youth groups have variations of this policy and their programs are movingly along just fine. Unfortunately this policy is a necessary evil.
It's sad to see that many of you, who have spent an enormous amount of time and resources to promote EAA, the Young Eagle program, and aviation in general have decided to pick up your ball and jacks and go home. Supposedly it stems solely from the issues raised from the Youth Protection Program. It seems to me a bit extreme that you would just drop your membership and involvement over this one policy. This one policy that granted needs some clarification and adjustments but has very workable solutions.
I am confident that HQ will work out the bugs and formally communicate these changes. Like any organization implementing a new program or policy, it's never perfect out of the gate. And many times it's never 100% but as Brett stated it's dynamic and changes will be made as required. It's obvious that HQ is listening since they've address some concerns in this forum and have already made some changes. But it appears for some that this is not good enough because it's either all or nothing. I'm afraid this is not a mature way to handle issues and conflicts.
The point that people are missing the boat on is that this policy is intended to mitigate risk or some have said, "CYA". It will not prevent 100% of the potential child abuse but it will help lower the chances of it happening. As one poster stated, we pilots are the best at mitigating risk. Just because we cannot find an incident of child abuse during a YE flight by doing a "Simple Internet Search", doesn't mean it hasn't happened or it won't happen. Thinking that since this program has such a good track record that we have nothing to worry about is not seeing the big picture. Would you not preflight or maintain your plane because it's never failed in flight before? No. You do everything possible to make sure that your plane will run as expected to maintain safe operation. Doing nothing to protect the kids, the membership, and the organizationis being complacent and you're asking for trouble.
I believe as a group we can work with EAA to make this policy successful. I've seen some good ideas that we can build on. Unfortunately I've also seen that some people are convinced that the EAA and the YE program will soon be dead and buried. This couldn't be farther from the truth. This organization hasn't lasted for 63 years by chance. Have they made mistakes along the way, absolutely. Again, what organization hasn't? But to immediately write off the program and organization rather than thinking of ways to work through problems and issues is truly sad and for those people I hope your solo endeavors are successful.
In closing I'd liketo say that I'm very grateful Paul did not have the "This won't work, Can't and won't do it, it's going to die" attitude as many of you have. If that were the case, we would not be here having this discussion nor would we have many of the privileges that we enjoy in GA today.
Safe flying everyone.
-Chuck