For Matt Vercher, Scouting has been a lifelong undertaking. Vercher began his journey with the Boy Scouts as a youth and has been involved in the organization ever since.

“The world is better with Scouts than it would be without, and I wanted to be a part of that movement,” Vercher said. He recently was named the new Boy Scout District Director for Suffolk and Western Tidewater

He signed up with Boy Scouts when he was just 8 years old and enjoyed his experiences so much that when his son was old enough, he immediately signed him up for Cub Scouts.

Vercher loves telling people the story of how he became a Cub Scoutmaster. He said he left the room for a moment and returned to discover he had been nominated as the Cub Scoutmaster.

“My favorite part in all my years is when you teach a youth something for the first time, and you see them repeat it back to you,” he said. “There’s a look that they get when they do something on their own.”

He has been employed by Boy Scouts of America for 11 years. He began working with the Scouts after a trip to a Boy Scout office in Texas, when he was picking up badges for his son. He was a civilian contractor on vacation from a job overseas at the time, but he gladly left that job to work with the Boy Scouts. They called him with a job opportunity that night, and he accepted. He went back overseas, packed up all his belongings and came home to begin his new career.

During his first job with the Boy Scouts of America, he served as district executive and as a camping director for four and a half years. He next worked with the Boy Scouts in Florida as a district director and as a camping director.

In his new position, he is responsible for unit support, chartering new groups, making sure leaders are properly trained, organizing district and council activities like the Klondike races, the lumberjack event and fishing activities, organizing weekend Cub Scout and Boy Scout activities, special dinners and more. He has been acting as district director for Suffolk and Western Tidewater for almost two months now.

“There’s a benefit,” he said. “There’s a joy to being in the program that’s hard to explain if you’re not in the program.”