Month: September 2010

Last night I was chatting to the Mums of two new Beavers. As our conversation progressed, one of the Mums whose daughter had just joined the Colony, asked me if Brownies still existed.

Now I have to admit this kind of surprised me. Girl Guiding UK, of which the Brownies are the section for 7 – 10 year old girls, is celebrating its centenary this year and there has been quite a bit in the media about their celebrations.

Quick bit of history. Girl Guides was started in 1910 by the founder of the Scout movement, Baden-Powell and his sister, as girls had started to form their own Scout patrols. The convention of the Edwardian society was that girls were delicate things who couldn’t possibly do the activities that the Scouts did and so the Guides were created to provide suitable activities for the girls. There is some evidence, however, that BP did want girls in Scouts. And it remained this way until girls could join Scouts in the early 1990s (Ventures from 1976). However, only girls can join Guides.

Now does the Mum asking if Brownies are still around, show a failure of Girl Guiding nationally or locally in the North Staffordshire area to promote themselves sufficiently? I know there has been plenty of coverage about their centenary and they do have an interesting campaign about the airbrushing of women in photographs. But do I notice these stories because they are related to Scouting, and would I notice them if I wasn’t in Scouting? The other thing is that the Scout Association does seem, from my point of view, to have a stronger PR department. A huge thing was made about Bear Grylls becoming and being the Chief Scout. Do the Guides have a similar person? The SA are also good at putting good news stories into the press. Again, locally Guides do seem to get less publicity than Scouts and their general organisation (locally) seems weaker. Or is that my perception?

Interestingly, when the Guides publish their membership figures they have more members than the SA, yet the Scouts are seen as the ‘bigger’ organisation.

If any Guides reading this have any views or points they’d like to share about this, I’d love to hear from you.

I was chatting to my Group’s Beaver Leader about the forthcoming Beaver camp (of course Beavers don’t actually camp as such, they have to stay indoors) and she was concerned about the costs.

A little background: Beavers can only stay in indoor accommodation and cannot stay away from their parents for more than 24 hours. This means that when going ‘camping’ buildings have to be hired. On most campsites this means that you have to hire the buildings for the whole weekend and not for a 24 hour period. The other thing to bear in mind is that you can’t really charge a Beaver the same as, say a Cub, ‘camping’ in the same building for a whole weekend.

All this means that a Beaver camp is relatively expensive to run and will most likely run at a loss. So with this in mind, do we then think that we cannot run the camp as we will lose money?

Well, no. That is what the Group’s funds are for. If we take the attitude that we cannot run the camp then the Beavers don’t get to enjoy the experience of being at a campsite with all their friends, being away from Mum and Dad and family, in some cases for the first time and experiencing Scouting activities for the first time, for example climbing or cooking on a fire. If we as a Group have the money available then this is what it is there for. it’s kind of nice to know we have £xxx in the bank, but it was raised for the kids in the Group.

I don’t actually think that we will have to put too much Group money to the camp, but we will and it’ll mean that the Beavers have a great time at camp.

Rachael and I will be going out to see them all, although we’ll just be observers as I can’t do a great deal of Scouting activities with a baby with me!

In my last post I talked a bit about Escouts and the forums they provide. As well as the forums, until recently, they also provided free hosting for UK Scouting websites. This has been of enormous benefit to many Groups around the country who have been able to set up a sit without any cost.

However their free hosting service has been stopped recently due to a number of reasons, but mainly due to technical problems and the lack of time available to the Escouts owners. This is of course, because they have jobs, families and other Scouting commitments before they even think about the hosting. So they’ve called it a day.

Interestingly, by providing this service, they recon they’ve saved UK Scouting in the region of £100,000 – £150,000! Now if that’s not generous, I don’t know what is!

So a big thank you for all their hard work and generosity in providing that service!