Group Scout Leader’s Conference

Yesterday I spent the day in Telford at a Group Scout Leader’s Conference run by Headquarters. It was for all the GSLs from the Counties of the West Midlands region.

First thing they talked about was the FISH philosophy, which was quite interesting and not some horrible HR thing as I thought it might be!

We then split off into workshops which covered various aspects of the GSL’s job and how we can improve our Groups. We also got to meet our Regional Development Team, which was good as I now know they exist and what their role is! The other thing they asked was what could HQ do to improve our lives as GSLs and how could communications be improved!

The thing that disappointed me however, was that there were only around 30 GSLs there and only one other one from my own District. Now although there was one event a couple of weeks ago in our area and there’s another in the new year, the numbers did seem a lot lower than they should have been.

What did impress me was that here were 30 people from 30 Groups from quite varying areas of the country giving up their Sunday and getting together get ideas to improve their Groups, improve the Scouting they offer and make things more enjoyable, interesting and stimulating for the young people in their Groups.

Now compare this to the woman who had a go a Scoutmaster Jerry last week. This type of person is not just confined to the US. Some people are quite happy to complain and disagree with Scouting, but they never seem to want to put anything positive into their communities. So you don’t agree with Scouting’s values and rules? That’s ok, but go and do something worthwhile with a youth club for example!

Anyway, back to the conference, I came away feeling quite positive and realising I have some work to do to ensure that we offer the right programme and that all the correct procedures are in place. My colleague from my District had the same thoughts as well. Now this doesn’t mean that we are operating badly and the section’s programmes are poor, it just means that there is some ‘tweaking’ to be done to ensure we are doing our best.

A day well spent I thought (although Carol was grumbling that I was off for another day away from her!).

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