Month: June 2011

Last weekend I went to camp for my first full weekend with our Beavers. I’ve visited them while at camp before, but never stayed for the whole time.

Now I have to mention here that I wasn’t in ‘full Leader’ mode as such while we were there, as Carol and Rachael (wife & daughter) were there as well, so a lot of my time was spent chasing after an 18 month old little girl who was enjoying being out in the open and playing in the mud and puddles! The other Leaders knew it was going to be like this!

We all went out on the Friday evening to prepare and the Beavers came out on the Saturday morning.

Beavers are only allowed to stay away from home for one night, which is why they came out on Saturday. They can now sleep under canvas, but it was decided that it’s much easier for them to stay in a building – they are only 6 – 8 years old!

The theme for the camp was ‘under the sea’ so the Beavers had fun with all things water based (luckily it had stopped raining by this point!).

Of course, we had a campfire which was great fun.

The thing to bear in mind with a Beaver camp is that there is virtually no downtime for the Leaders. There are things going on all the time and the Beavers must be kept occupied while they are awake! This could well be the first time they are away from Mum and Dad and not with family members so there is the possibility they could get homesick. So the fact the kids are only at camp for two days is quite enough for Leaders. Having said that, EVERYONE on the camp had a brilliant time and really enjoyed themselves. This is of course down to the dedication of the Leaders and the huge amount of planning by the Beaver Leader.

As a personal aside, we bought Rachael a pop up tent with tiger stripes for her to play in (first tent I’ve ever bought!) and she loved it. Not too long before she can sleep in it, rain permitting, I think!

This week I’ve participated in two different uses of Twitter. First of all I was blamed by Scouter Jeff for his recent higher than normal tea consumption! My English influence reaching all the way to California apparently! This then descended into national stereotypes of me  preferring tea and more of my American friends preferring coffee (why is coffee called Joe by the way?), until Shawn and Scouter Liberty mentioned iced tea. Now as any normal person (i.e. English!) knows, iced tea is just wrong!

Anyway the point being that we all had some fun and there was some general silliness going on over long distances!

Then today came another. I read in our local paper last night about one of my District’s Groups trying to raise enough money to buy the old church they meet in. So today I’ve put the story on the District website and sent out a message on the District’s Twitter account. I’ve then retweeted the message through my Group’s account and my own (these multiple personalities can get confusing!).

This evening I received a tweet from another local youth group asking for the Scout Group’s contact details as the youth group might be able to offer some help. I’ve passed details on, and I  don’t know if anything will become of the contact, but at least their message is getting ‘out into the wild’ so to speak.

I really do hope that the Group raise enough money to buy their old church and hopefully tweeting about it may have made some difference!

One silly use of Twitter and a potentially useful one to a Group raising money. Social media can be great, if used correctly, for helping people so if you know of something worthwhile,  tweet your friends!

Seriously! Last night I got an email from Augustus Clibbon  who is a monkey and the mascot of the 3rd Ware Scout Group from Hertfordshire. This is the Group whose Scouts produced the video on how to tie a friendship knot which is very popular on my Group’s site.

Augustus appears to be a well travelled monkey and goes to a lot of the events his Group runs. He even has his own blog and website! All very impressive for a monkey. Perhaps he could get together with Buttons the Radical Boy Scout to present a joint podcast!

It’s also good to read that his Group is celebrating its centenary this year, so happy birthday to them!

I was saddened and annoyed to hear that one of the Groups in our District had their Scout hut broken into just before the weekend and had some tents and lamps stolen.

Luckily for the Group, this is more of an inconvenience than anything else, but that is not point. The running costs of their building will increase (insurance etc.), which means that less money raised for the Group will be spent directly on the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts.

But what annoys me most is that they are targeted by thieves whose sole intention is making a couple of easy quid by selling the stuff down the pub (although I doubt they’d get that much cash).  I guess it doesn’t enter their stupid heads that by focusing on community based groups like the Scouts, they could cause some of them to close and potentially condemn young people to have no activities outside school or hanging around on the streets.

Hopefully the police will catch these ‘naughty people’.

Read more about the break in here.