EAA YOUNG EAGLES PROGRAM LETTER

You probably have received by now a letter from the EAA Young Eagles Office regarding the introduction of a “Youth Protection Policy and Program” for the Young Eagles Program. I am quite concerned and upset that EAA is implementing this program! I have taken the required on-line training and submitted my information for the required background check. However, while I may continue to fly Young Eagles, I will be resigning my position as Chapter Young Eagles Coordinator. I will make this official at our next chapter meeting. I don’t want the responsibility 0f assuring that the required “adult supervision” is in place at our July 4th (and other) YE events. If you haven’t gotten into this new mandate yet, you will see that EAA is requiring two trained adult supervisors on site for every 10 kids under 13 years of age that are present during the event. Two staff are required for every 24 kids over the age of 13. The way I see it, the only way we can be assured of complying with this requirement is to have the kids fill out the YE forms before they enter the event area or provide us with a birth certificate or other proof of age documentation. Based on the number of adult supervisors on site, we would probably have to restrict entry to a limited number of kids at any given time. Also, as most of you are aware, it is always an issue trying to get sufficient pilots and aircraft to fly the kids that we can attract at our July 4th event. Realize that, per this mandate if, for example, we were to have 40 kids under the age of 13 show up at the clubhouse (not an unrealistic assumption based on your past two years event) in a short period of time, we would need 8 trained adult supervisors circulating on site! This, obviously, is in addition to the pilots, aircraft loaders, etc that we need to safely fly the kids! Please, if you have any interest at all in the Young Eagles Program, come to the February meeting so we can try to sort this out! (John, please put this item on the February meeting agenda.) If you share my concern I also encourage you to contact the two people listed at the bottom of the subject letter. I will be forwarding the text of this post to them to let them know what I think of this mandate.

Gary Ludeke, Young Eagles Coordinator

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