I was talking to a colleague at work the other day and he brought up the subject of Scouting. He had seen us at our Annual General Meeting as we had hired my School’s sports hall and he uses part of it to run his fitness business.
He was telling me that he was very impressed at the number of young people who were there and also the number of parents present. As a side note, I think we had around 2/3 of the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts there. He mentioned that he thought when his grandson was old enough, he would be likely to join us.
My colleague went on to say he was very impressed to hear that Bear Grylls was our Chief Scout. He thought that he is a good role model for our young people as he is an obvious outdoorsy type of person.
While talking to my colleague, he admitted he didn’t know too much about the Scouts and that he’d never given the movement much thought. But by seeing the number of young people and parents we had at our AGM and by the Scout Association’s publicity regarding our new Chief Scout, he told me how impressed he was and what a good job we were obviously doing!
By promoting Scouting at both the national and local levels, a good perception can be cultivated in people who don’t necessarily know much about us and this can only be a good thing.
If nothing else, I think in a few years time we will have gained a new Beaver!
Absolutely! Making ourselves visable in more contexts than in silly parodies on commedy shows and wierd adds, scandal notes in the papers about suspected sexual abuse and penalism (wierd how journalists always find it relevant to mention any links (how ever long ago or insignificant) with the scout movement!). That’s why I work very hard to, instead of holding our courses in remote huts in the woods, to if possible make sure that people can get there, in their uniforms, by public transport and on foot. Silly little things, but to show off the great things we do.
Next year we’re having our centinuary camp in the town park! (it’s a very big park for a small town) And we get to arrange the national annual meeting too. Also, there are at least two public displays of our history, a slide show of scouting pictures on the wall of the town hall. Lots of good publicity. Hopefully.
Sounds like you’re going to have a great time next year!
For the 2007 Centenary, we had a big ‘open day’ at one of our local parks and we had a few Scouting activities available. One of which was a ‘portable’ climbing wall. It generated a lot of interest and was another example of positive ways of promoting Scouting.
Now if we could just teach the lazy journalists and media types (I’m stereotyping here of course – just like they do!) to not dwell on the negitive and on the past, it’d be great!