Photo courtesy of City of Kalona

The City of Kalona has new signage on the Southtown Area Trail thanks to Boy Scout Mose Yoder. Mose is a member of Scout Troop 235 in Riverside, and he installed the signs as a project to earn his Eagle Scout rank, the highest a boy scout can receive. Requirements include picking out a project that will be unique to the scout.The scout must lead the project and discuss the project with the beneficiary, they cannot financially benefit from the project and it must be approved by the scout leaders and beneficiary. 

Mose shares what his favorite part of the project was and what was most challenging, “My favorite part of the project honestly was, right like the minute everything got done.The minute I was able to look around and see the posts up with the signs on them and just how good they looked, because it was a long process, don’t get me wrong. Just getting everything done, everything planned and set up, dealing with the weather and what not. But just, I don’t know, the pride in seeing that what I had accomplished was actually feasible and was actually done was probably my proudest and most exciting moment.”

Another requirement that Mose had to meet was to write a reflection letter that the scouting board will review later this summer, “I strongly recommend scouting for everybody, get into scouts as soon as you can. It’s a great experience. It might seem a little slow at the beginning but you’ll be having so much fun and you learn so much and you don’t even realize it until later on. We had to write, it was kind of a reflection type letter, for my Eagle Board review that will go on I think in June or July, but I was sitting there writing and I’m thinking man, really who I am has been shaped by scouts because you go by the scout laws, the scout oath, and you live by those things whether you realize it or not, and the values and the skills that you learned growing up in scouting, it’s subconscious, it’s second nature by the time you get to where I’m at.

Mose credits his dad as well as Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh, for inspiration and help during the implementation process. Hear more from Mose during the JJ Nichting Company in Touch with Southeast Iowa program on air and at kciiradio.com.