Category: Scouts

Sorry about the lack of updates, but I’ve been a bit busy with other things (mainly 2 small girls!).

However, Scouting hasn’t gone all quiet, in fact I have been quite busy. Two recent highlights have been the Beaver camp that I went on and the Group’s Annual  General Meeting / BBQ / Olympics event.

The Beaver’s camp was a really good weekend and had the theme of Space Camp! Yes, they did dress up as astronauts and even went into space in their own shuttle! It was a brilliant weekend and we had fun too.

This year for our Annual General Meeting, we decided to do something different.

To mark this year’s Olympics, we thought that we would stage our own games! After having a BBQ lunch the games began. All the Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and parents(!) were split up into 5 teams representing a country from each continent. They competed in track and field events and even completed some swimming events. On dry land. Without a pool! The synchronised swimming event was particularly impressive!

After the games we all went inside for the AGM. Each section made their annual reports to let everyone know what has been going on in the Colony, Pack, Troop and Drum Corps.

As last year’s video report was such a success (so I was told), my Group Scout Leader’s report was again partially a collection of pictures of the activities that members of the Group have taken part in during the last 12 months. This is done so that I don’t repeat what has already been said and I don’t bore people to death!

So here it is –

 

I saw this video about gangs today. Very thought provoking – take a look.

I came across this video on Youtube from 4th Golcar Scout Group today. Being a bit of a Trekkie, I was very impressed that they had managed to get Patrick Stewart to record it for them.

I wonder if we could get someone famous to do a video for us??

…is the kind of response you get when asking the Scouts (etc.) to go to St. George’s Day Parade on a Sunday afternoon. And in a sense, they are right! It’s not the same as hanging off a rock on a rope, paddling down a river in a canoe or even spending the night in a tent for the first time away from Mum and Dad.

However, when asked to attend, they do and do so in numbers! Last Sunday it was very pleasing to see so many of the young people from my Group had turned out for what was a rather soggy parade (the rain had been on and off all day and naturally was chucking it down when it was time for the parade!) through the centre of Newcastle. In fact the whole District had a good turn out and it was an impressive site to see virtually the whole of one ‘street’ (the Ironmarket) filled with Scouts and Guides. There were people watching on either side of the parade and they were not just family and friends. This is where such things as these parades come into their own as it shows to the general public that we’re still here and that a lot of young people are involved in Scouting!

The other good thing was that we got to show off our Drum Corps again. This time they had the junior section (the Cubs) with them for the first time and they were great. Hopefully, they will be at the front of the parade next year!

See piccys and video from here.

 

Following on from my last post about something from the past of my Group, comes something very up to date! Last night our Drum Corps had their first annual Band Inspection. All Scout Bands have a yearly inspection to ensure that they uphold the correct standards for a Scout band which performs in public. Happily we passed!

 

It’s very impressive to see how much effort the young people put into their playing and how good they are considering how short a time a lot of them have been playing!

I am very impressed and proud!

Today the part of our website that pays tribute to the members of the Troop who were killed in World War 1 and World War 2 is being relaunched

When it was originally set up in 2005, the site had the list of the names that are on our War Memorial in St. Andrew’s Church with links to each man’s commemorative page on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website. It actually took a while to locate all the men and it has only been in the last couple of months that the last one has been properly identified.

On the new site, you can see information about each of the men, such as where they lived, information about their parents and siblings, what jobs they had, their grave or memorial and in a few cases a photo of the man himself. There is also some information on our Memorial and the Porthill War Memorial.

In addition to the men on the Memorial, we have found one Scout who was killed in World War 2 and four more, from a list we have of our original Scouts from 1908, who were killed in The Great War (WW1). These men are now commemorated here as well.

It is especially poignant that the site is being relaunched today as it is exactly 94 years to the day that one of our Scouts, Harold Bailey, died of the wounds received in battle (25th March 1918). He died while fighting on the Somme with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

Please take a look at the site here.

Nothing really interesting or insightful to write today, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to write something on the 29th of February! Won’t be able to do this again until 2016.

I spent the weekend at Barnswood Camp (that’s the view from the gate at the top of the page) with our Cubs and those from Berry Hill. This is our traditional yearly camp with them, although we are a couple of months late this time!

This camp I spent my time on the cooking team and was, what seemed to be, constantly washing up! If you’ve ever catered for over 60 people you’ll know that they create a LOT of dishes! However, despite my dish-pan hands, I had a really good time, and more importantly so did the Cubs!

The odd thing about the campsite now is that they’ve had to remove all their rhododendron bushes due to disease. The site was surrounded with rhododendron and now its all been removed, the camp looks oddly open. Each camping pitch used to be quite secluded. Now you can even see the camp properly from the road, which you’ve never been able to do before! The character of the site has changed somewhat, but it’s still a great place to camp!

Last week, the Scouts were given a guided backstage tour of the Regent Theatre in Hanley by our Assistant Scout Leader. There was no show on, so we were able to go to areas the public never see. We even went the top of the stage – 21 metres high!

While we were on the stage, I was able to present one of our Scouts with his Chief Scout’s Gold Award.

After which he got a huge round of applause from the rest of the Scouts sitting in the auditorium!

That’s probably the first and last time that I’ll be standing on the stage of a major theatre and get a round of applause!

As I mentioned last time, Chris and I have had another discussion this time on the topic of “Should Girl Guiding UK & the Scout Association Merge?”.

This time it’s on Chris’s blog, Jabbering All Day Long. Have a read, here, and tell us what you think by leaving a comment. We look forward to hearing what others have to say.

There was in an interesting article in one of the newspapers the other day by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. In it he said that the likes of the Occupy London movement and Fred Goodwin use their skills to become volunteers for the Scout and Guide movements. Now to be fair he did also mention a lot of the other youth organisations, but the Scouts and Guides were his main focus.

Now I’m not too sure if the some of Occupy people or Sir Fred would make suitable volunteers, but Boris does make the point that the various youth organisations are crying out for adult help and that a volunteer run youth group can work wonders with kids, before there is a need to spend oodles of money on clearing up crime caused by gangs etc.

According to Boris, there are 8000 kids on waiting list as there is a lack of suitable adults to help out. This is why it was so important that when the Duchess of Cambridge decided to volunteer it was stressed that she would be doing it on a flexible basis.

I do think there a lot of people are now realising how important the work that all the youth organisation do and that there is more importance and a greater positive image being placed on adults volunteering.