Cambridgeskip

The thread about why not to let adults do what the scouts can do reminded me of some brain picking I meant to do..... Last weekend, for the first time, I had the issue of the parent who wouldn't let the scouts get on with it. We were camping at a scout campsite Friday night ready to do a long hike to another camp Saturday. Scouts were dropped off by parents with adult leaders having arrived half an hour earlier with a car load of tents. A pretty standard drill. First 3 scouts to arrive also happened to be tent mates, very convenient, they grabbed a 3 man tent and got stuck into putting it up. Dad comes over to say hello to me and the two adults. All very friendly and appreciative. Other scouts start to arrive, I get a bit busier dishing out tents, collecting the last minute permission forms in etc etc. Turn around and there is dad, still there, getting right in the way of the 3 boys by trying to help with the tent! Now they are 3 of the younger scouts but the two older ones had done it before and were perfectly capable of getting it up and had been in the process of teaching the younger scout how to do it (It's not rocket science!) I got rid of dad in the end but not after gentle hints had failed and I had to quite firmly say "they can do it themselves". As I say, the first time I've had to deal with this. Most parents drop and run, particularly when its raining like it was last Friday! And hints on subtle ways of getting rid of parents without being rude?

The joy of zero tolerance. Here in the UK we have some draconian knife laws that were brought in as a result of some nasty incidents in the 1990s. In short they say that it is illegal to have a knife about your person in a public place (which includes scout campsites for these purposes) unless you have a good reason for doing so. An exception is made for knives of 3 inches or less, that don’t lock and that fold away. So if I take my knife (which locks) to scouts on a Thursday night and forget to take it out of my bag before going to work on Friday morning I am committing a criminal offence. End of story. I work in an office, I have no reason to have a knife with me. I can end up with a jail sentence. Hence when scouts get knives one of the first things they end up getting told is not how to use it safely or keep it sharp but how to not get arrested. It’s absurd.

This whole 25% thing has been rather "spun". I can understand why, it gives a story to get it into the papers (it made three of the nationals) What seems to be brushed over is that the female membership is weighted heavily in favour of adults. Some 45% of adult volunteers are women. When you work the numbers through it means that female youth membership is around 18%.

As a follow up to this.... While we were gliding has 4 other scouts away on a week long mountaineering course in Scotland, again run by our neighbouring county. I got an email from instructors telling me how they were a credit to the troop and I should raise a glass in a toast to them. One in particular has been described as future instructor material (ie a potential mountain leader) and they would rather like to keep hold of her. Feeling rather proud right now

Cheers for the thoughts chaps. As it happens we're due to be meeting the American Girl Scouts from RAF Alconbury next month. We'll see if we can find some Dr Who memorabilia to flog them

It cuts both ways though. A story for you.... So I run scouts, 10-14 year olds. But I have 3 x explorer scouts (14-17) who are attached the troop as young leaders. 2 of these went to the world jamboree in Japan last year. One of them is quite passionate about equality and before going to Japan I'm sorry to say her opinion of BSA was not a high one. She was well versed on the previous ban on gay members and is well aware of the continuing local option for leaders (don't shoot the messenger here). Over all, she was not impressed. She came back from Japan with multiple American friends and bought me a BSA contingent t-shirt as a souvenir. She'd learned that you folks are human beings as well! (I'd tried to explain this before hand but teenagers will be teenagers) So like I say, it cuts all ways. Everyone has something to learn from everyone else.

Yes and no. While boys and girls meet separately they are still part of the same WOSM affiliated national organisation, have the same program, uniform etc and have regular joint events.

We had a an adult leaders meeting last night where there was hot topic of debate with no conclusion reached beyond putting it to the PLs Council for their input. That is fund raising.... My group is quite lucky in that we have a twin troop in Canada. They came to us for summer camp in 2015 and we are planning on going to them in 2017. It won't be cheap. Our estimate is about £1300 per person pre fund raising. We will need to fund raise and our target is to get it down to £1000 or less per person. In addition, while we draw from a reasonably wealthy area of town, not all our families are as well off and we want to make some extra provision for getting the cost down even further for them. So far so good. We also have an annual event called The Sun Run. It's an over night hike, sun set to sun rise, the closest Saturday night to the summer solstice each June. Normally we get the troop to decide on a charity and we get sponsored and typically raise close to £2K for that charity. The question is whether this year charity should begin at home and we use it as a fund raiser for Canada. Broadly there are 3 options 1. Stick as we are and do it for another charity Pros - its within the scout spirit of doing something for others and sponsors are likely to be more generous if we're doing it for others. everyone has an equal amount of skin in the game when it's 3am and raining and they're tired.... Cons - does nothing for Canada fund raising and we will need to fit something else into the pogram, 2. Use it as a general fund raiser for Canada Pros - its a tried an tested, popular part of the program that we will get a good turn out for as the scouts love it. Proven money spinner Cons - much of the sponsorship comes from families of those doing it which somewhat defeats the object. Sponsors may be less generous. Not everyone doing it has as much skin in the game 3. Use it to assist those who need extra help with Canada Pros - its a tried an tested, popular part of the program that we will get a good turn out for as the scouts love it. Proven money spinner. everyone has skin in the game if they are helping their friends out who need it (although recipients stay anonymous) Cons - does nothing for general Canada fund raising thus needing to get something else into the program. There's the 4th option of doing a mixture of the 3. Like I say, next stage is PLs council but just wondering what others think.....

Air Scouting is still alive and kicking here. Alas though, last year, our HQ withdrew one of its more special badges, Scout Wings. These used to be awarded to youth members who had made a certain number (I forget how many) solo flights in a glider, balloon or powered air craft. They were pretty rare but did mean a lot. HQ say it's been replaced by the new Air Activities staged award. Given though that even stage 6 of 6 does not require a solo flight I don't buy that at all. A real shame.

Had an interesting scouting weekend. We are very lucky in Cambridge, just outside town in an airfield where our neighbouring scout county (roughly equivalent to what I think you call a Council) keep a motorised glider which they use to run various scout gliding events to vary standards. 18 of our scouts went out to the airfield this weekend for their first experience of gliding. They have a full day there where they cover quite a lot of theory about flight, airfield operations etc, but the highlight of course is that each of them get a 20 minute flight (with an instructor!) where they get to take the controls. Photos on our website here. The reason for putting it in this bit of the forum is because of how amazing it is to see the kids stepping up and actually conquering their own fears. In the briefing room where they were all together there was plenty of bravado. No one admitted in front of their friends to being scared. In reality, when each of them was walked out to the glider nearly all of them admitted to being nervous and one, when she was being strapped in, was clearly shaking. We offered her the chance to back out but no, her older brother had done it, no way was she backing down! All of them came back again absolutely buzzing! To have taken the controls of an aircraft at their age, the youngest was just 10, is something quite amazing. All of them had flown before on airliners. Flying in a tiny two seat aircraft where you can put your hand out the window and then someone switches the engine off and it takes off and lands on a grass strip is a very different experience. Very proud of all of them

Ian As Qwaze said, explorer age will have got it that you disagreed. Even older scouts fully get the nuances of how adults behave with each other. I wouldn't worry about the particular incident too much. Worth thinking about how to handle it in future. I am a naturally political sort. I am interested in many different issues. Around the scouts I will tell them my opinion if they ask, most of the time though I will tend to listen to them but play a gentle devil's advocate. Certainly no table thumping. It can result in some interesting conversations. And yes, last general election we held a hustings night with reps invited from the big 5 political parties. We got parliamentary candidates for Labour and UKIP and local council candidates from Green and Lib Dems. It was a great evening. In my job I am a civil servant and am senior enough that I am expected to stay neutral in my public life on party political matters so was only allowed to attend if I chaired the meeting! Most frustrating

Yes and no. Yes in that it won't (at least in theory) let you join without making an official version of the promise, which for UK nationals includes "duty to the Queen" (Non UK nationals say "duty to the country in which I am now living"). No in that doesn't mean there is any rule against republicans. I am 100%, dyed in the wool republican (which this side of the pond mostly means quite left wing), I am completely open about it but there is nothing to stop me joining. I am fully permitted to be open about my political rules and can't be kicked out or prevented from joining. If you are curious as to how I justify making the promise, it's because I understand our constitution. I may not like how our head of state is appointed but it remains a point of fact who our head of state is. We have a constitutional monarch as our head of state who has no real power* and they are a figure head only. Any promise to the monarch is in that context, not a personal one. So when promising duty to the Queen I am actually promising duty to the country's population as a whole, something I have no issue with. *except when there is a "hung" parliament, ie no one party has an over all majority and where no coalition is formed. In that case the monarch appoints as Prime Minister the member of parliament they believe is most likely to command a majority in the House of Commons. Even then they are advised by the privy council.

A couple of things we do here in he UK that you might want to consider First we have the "Thanks" badge. It is an official badge made to be presented to non members for doing something for scouting. It's quite rare to be awarded and it's a local decision whether to do so. The only time I awarded it was when I was on the management team for our local centenary camp in 2007. Cubs and beavers were meant to have central catering. The caterer (who was feeding over 400 people) pulled out at 3 days notice. The mums of 2 of my cubs ran a school catering business and stepped into the breach and did it all at cost. They were formally presented with it. We also have the "birthday honours" each August. To be honest this is more of a PR stunt with prominent individuals given scout badges to make their achievements. Recipients include Jessica Eniss-Hill getting the athletes badge after getting a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics, Arch Bishop of York got My Faith and the band Scouting for Girls got musician. To be honest while it's a good PR stunt I would like to see it made a bit less gimiky in the way it's done. On a totally unofficial note I once had my pocket picked and my wallet stolen on the London Underground. I was bailed out by a woman who turned out to be a doctor who leant me the money for my train ticket home and something to eat. When I sent her the money back I included a scouts Emergency Aid badge which she framed and hung on her surgery wall. Turned out she had a son who was a cub at the time!

That's a curious point. My understanding was that with the exception of The Netherlands and Sweden that had atheist promises before the policy was brought in during the 1920s that WOSM didn't allow any countries to have atheist promises. When the UK brought in the "alternative" promise I assume that WOSM must have made some kind of policy change. However everything I've seen so far from WOSM seems to imply that the policy remains. A rather curious situation.

Interesting question, I guess it depends on what he market would demand. I had a quick look on ebay and found this, world jamboree 2007 (ie world centenary) participants necker, at the time of typing the bidding is at nearly $80. Of course there are a lot more people who would want one pushing the price up, but there are a lot more of them out there pushing the price down. When my troop turn 100 in 1911 we produced a t-shirt and hoodie, no one has tried to buy mine yet! One thing worth asking, has your troop got any famous alumni? That might push the price up, especially if you can get alumni to buy one. Finally though..... congratulations on turning 100! There;s not many troops in the world that have that distinction

Girl Guide groups here vary massively. Far more than scouts do. A good friend is a guide leader. She's a doctor that regularly does aid work in war zones around the world. She's pretty tough and even having cancer didn't stop her. At one point she was administering her own chemo while sheltering in a shell hole with mortar bombs wizzing over her head somewhere in West Africa. As I'm sure you can imagine her group is VERY active and very popular and recently won the district scout and guide incident hike competition by a healthy margin. On the other hand there are groups that spend lots of time drinking tea. Sadly the latter seem to be on the increase.

Again that sounds familiar. From 1991 each group here could chose whether to admit girls. From 2007 all groups became coed. Quarter of a century since the first change, thick end of a decade since the second and girls still make up only around 20% of scouts in the UK. Most still prefer to go to Girl Guides (there's a few that go to both). About 5 years ago we held a joint evening with the Girl Guides that use our building. We went out to a local campsite for a wide games and camp fire night. Even if you didn't know the kids you could pick out the girls who were scouts from the girls who were guides very easily. The scout girls came in walking boots or trail shoes, chose dark coloured fleeces or water proofs so they couldn't be seen in the woods etc. The girls who were guides were all wellie boots and floral hats and gloves. Just a case of horses for courses! That said, I think that last post from Stosh has some words of wisdom. I won't pretend to know what your rules and regs are but I would be very wary about taking kids along who were not official members.

To be honest my experience has been entirely the opposite. I find mixed groups easier in terms of getting their attention than single sex groups, be they all boys or all girls. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I've found it consistently. I've seen young love blossom in the troop a couple of times but the discipline of scouting means that it's never been out of hand and never caused a problem. They understand that when they have chores to do them they do them, when an adult or PL is talking they listen and so on. I don't know it happened in other countries but in the UK it was a bottom up thing. Groups started unilaterally admitting girls. Eventually national gave into the inevitable. And yes it has been a success. We are preparing young people for the big wide world. In that world unless they join a monastery they are going to have to work with the opposite sex. I'd argue they should be trained to do that from an early age. That's my view from my side of the pond. Would it work your side? I don't know. I know one fact though, every argument that I've seen on here against it was also had over here before the whole association went mixed. And all those fears proved unfounded.

I've just read an excellent post on 1st Facebook Scout Group. For those unfamiliar with 1st Facebook it's a UK dominated (although with a few from other countries) open facebook group for scouts and scouters. It's often full of some terrible and repetitive posts but every now and then something excellent gets posted. This is one of them. A cautionary tale about internet safety that I will be making sure my scouts and young leaders get to see. For those not on Facebook it goes like this (to be clear, I didn't write it) and it's chilling..... Internet safety... please don't scroll past or start ranting this is not one of those posts. People seem to get excited over the Internet safety "see how far this gets shared" posts and I have to agree that I am not keen on many of them either but for a slightly different reason and here is why. Some time ago there was a post by some UK Explorers doing internet safety. It was the standard post like/share/name/location. Instead of liking on sharing I decided to do some investigation. Now before we go any further I am an ESL with all the necessary training, certificates etc, I am also a geek having been online since the 1980s in the days of 300 baud acoustic couples and 1200/75bpm dial up modems. I am not a criminal or a risk to children. I did some cyberstalking; obviously I am not going to use real names or anything identifiable and I have changed details in case the young lady reads this and becomes distressed. So we have a bunch of explorers in a picture but I have their unit details, 1st Anytown, and it appears that it was posted by one of the explorers herself. I chose one at random, a very cheery smiley young lady. Let's call her A 1 Go to FB page of the poster( call her B). Not A but her page was not private so I looked through pictures and found A tagged so I have her name. 2 Go to FB page of A. This is fairly locked down with few public details but I do now know her school. This is the same town as her unit so it is safe to assume she lives in Anytown. 3 Back to B and check out other friends and find a few with public profiles. One of them is clearly good friends with A and has 'checked in' at her house on a number of occasions, it was a few years ago back maybe before she became more careful online but it is still there. I now know A's house (or 'Casa A' as it is called in some of the tags) to within GPS tolerances, 30 metres or so. I have a street name. 4 Online phone book. Surname. Street name. I now have phone number, house number and thanks to Google, a picture of her front and back doors and a view from above. Nice Garden. Couple of out buildings. Nice lawn. High fences for good cover both sides and the doors don't look that secure.... 5 Just for fun I google the address and get basic information about the over 18s in the house from a site selling information, mostly electoral roll and selling prices for houses. I choose the free option and there are 3 over 18s living there all with the same surname. I now know her parent's names and ages and her older sister. Try googling your own name and address and see. 6 Off to unit page. I now know where she is every Monday night between 7 and 9pm. thanks to the programme posted on the website I now know where she is likely to be Mondays, a couple of Fridays and 2 weekends for the next few weeks. I also find out that A is a helper or young leader with cubs. Cannot find out the pack number but a google shows that there are 6 groups with cub pack, some with 2 pack. I dig a bit but don't find enough to isolate her pack. 7 Flash of inspiration. I compare the pack necker/scarf/ neckie in the picture with those on pack website photos and isolate the pack to a single location. I now know where she goes 6:30 to 8:30 on Thursday evenings. That took about 7 or 8 minutes. It actually too less time to do than to write this post. If I spent a few hours I could get a lot more but I already know where she lives, who she lives with, her age, her school, her friends, when she may be alone walking to or from cubs or explorers. I know when her unit is going to laserquest and that they are doing an Easter camp at a local campsite (goggled that one too). Creating her perfect boyfriend should be straightforward as I know she is a bit nerdy and likes superhero movies, sci fi TV shows (seems to have a thing for the actor who plays the Arrow) and Zelda games as well as having dogs and cats, did gymnastics.... I am 80% sure I have her twitter handle. Internet security is not about mindlessly copying a like/share post it is about always thinking "who will see this?" "who is this person?" "Would I tell this to a total stranger on a bus?" Having 20,000 FB friends is not a life goal unless you are an international celebrity. If you do not personally know each and every one of your FB friends then delete them. I could easily make a honey trap FB account targeted to this young lady. If you feel uncomfortable when an middle aged guy looks at you in the swimming pool then don't post a picture to all and sundry of you in similar attire. Don't constantly check in everywhere, most teenagers will resist telling their parents where they are going but will happily tell the whole planet. Set your FB to private. Now this is a little creepy and I want it to be creepy, it should be scary, using the internet should not be regarded as a walk down main street Disneyland. The internet is a city with museums and crack houses, shopping streets and brothels. You need to be constantly aware which bit you are in. Remember that it does not matter if a photo reaches the opposite side of the world, it only needs to reach the perv who lives within travelling distance and that could be the same town.

Just curious... what sort of patrol names do you tend to get your side of the pond? With us nearly every troop uses animals. You see a few with a different theme, I've heard of rivers and mountain ranges, but the overwhelming majority use animals, so common that there is one range of patrol badges for animals and another range for everything else.

Interesting follow up to this..... The good the bad and the ugly. Yesterday was a busy evening. First I went to our feeder cub pack to talk to the next batch of cubs due to move up at Easter. With that cub pack they currently have one of my former scouts there as a "Young Leader" (YL). The YL scheme is for explorer scouts aged 14-17 who want to effectively be apprentice adult leader. I hadn't seen that explorer for well over a year but I got a big smile off of her and she came and sat with me while I talked the cubs through the process of moving up and what scouts was like. She had plenty of really good things to say about what she'd done there (we got her when she jumped ship from Girl Guides!) and how scouts get so much more freedom to do their own thing than at cubs. I almost blushed! From there it was a quick cycle across town where I was stand in Explorer Leader with a unit who's leaders were all out of town for some reason but has plenty of my former scouts in it. Again really nice to catch up with some old faces including one who has had the growth spurt to end all growth spurts since leaving scouts. He has grown something like 2 feet in the last 18 months. Extraordinary. Especially good as he was never a PL in scouts, never quite had it in him. In explorers though he is one of the leading figures in terms of pushing the whole unit forward. Great to see Bit of a sad note though. Some of them told me about a lad who had been a cub with me in my cub leader days. He quit before moving up to scouts. He's now 18. Apparently on bail awaiting trial on multiple pretty serious charges and looking like a stretch in prison is on the cards. I won't do the detail as it's not appropriate in public (especially when heard 2nd or 3rd hand from teenagers!) Sad times though.

I wonder whether A Bridge Too Far might work? Rather long but does have quite a few lessons for scouts; Fail to prepare, prepare to fail Keeping going against the odds Keeping your sense of humour Looking after your friends Leading from the front

Barry That's kind of what I'm saying, but it cuts both ways. As well as providing something to step up to you also have to pace things. SOme times that means holding back. I know our cub leader is very good at pioneering. For me though it's one of my weaker areas. There's little point him getting cubs building things that put explorer scouts to shame if they move up to me aged 10 and find they are having to take a step back. Similarly my strongest area is navigation. I don't take the scouts as far as I know I can because that won't leave them anywhere to go when they move on aged 14.

My thought on this is that burn out for adults and burn out for kids are kind if intertwined. To avoid burn out for the kids it's my opinion that as they get older they have to make sure that there is always something to step up to. That they don't sit there and think, well I've done that and that' all there is to do. It might seem obvious but too often adults lose sight of it. They keep repeating what the pack/troop/unit did before. Some times the kids themselves keep repeating it, because some times they don't know what is available to them. Yes programs should be as youth lead as possible but kids don't have the same world experience as adults and sometimes it needs an adult to say "well yes you've done that before, but have you thought of X, Y or Z?" And for that progression to work it needs adults to cooperate with each other. I talk to the cub leader at out group's cub pack regularly. I know what they've been up to so I know what those moving up are capable of and what they've done before. Similarly I speak to the leader of the explorer unit we feed into and he knows what those he gets have done before. So between me and the explorer leader we have agreed that the scouts will do day trips doing off shore sailing, the explorers will arrange to go on full weekends. Between me and the cub leader I know that the cubs build basic pioneering structures and with us they build working catapults. So the kids see that there is something to step up to. That cooperation will in itself avoid burn out among the adults. Cooperation means working together, taking on a fare share of the work load. Over this weekend and the next 2 my troop has got 4 different day trips happening. They are being covered by 8 different leaders with no one doing more than one. yes we are lucky to have that number of leaders available but we got there by having an enjoyable program and cooperating and being an attractive place to volunteer. The whole thing is circular.

On a 3 hour long coach ride we watched The Hunt for Red October, went down an absolute storm. I've always thought The Burbs might go down well but did wonder if is is a bit dated for today's generation? (I have tears run down my face with laughter every time I watch it!)