Tonight I’ve been to meet a potential new Assistant Scout Leader. He got in touch, out of the blue, to say he was interested in helping us, so I invited him for a chat. The interesting thing was that he had been a Leader (and Cub, Scout etc.) in the past. He’d left due to ‘life getting in the way’.
Interestingly, he is the second person to come to us to return to Scouting. One of my old Scouts (urg, that makes me feel old!), has recently returned to the Group, also as an Assistant Scout Leader. He’d been a Leader before, but again had to give up due to his circumstances.
Two other Leaders in the Group have also come to us after significant breaks.
All this is very good for us as it means that years of Scouting experience returns to the Group.
It is good that these people are able to return to Scouting and have done so without any persuasion.
The point of this is that with these returning Leaders, it enables us to provide a better programme for the younger members of the Group and also encourages those parents who have never done any Scouting are more likely to help out in some way.
And that’s the point. Although it is great to get ‘full time’ Leaders, anyone can help out at whatever level they wand and how often they want (‘an hour a week’?). All these adults helping out and bringing their individual skills to the Group, give us a huge pool of talent to enable us to get the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts to access new and interesting activities etc.