Cambridgeskip

So as per another thread this years summer camp was a cycling expedition. Now while the temperatures in the uk in summer aren't quite what they are your side of the pond it was still pretty warm. of 25-30 C each day and very humid. For the most part the kids are quite good at looking after themselves in the heat. Hats, t-shirts and sun screen come as standard without any need for adult nagging. A problem we found though was making sure the kids drank enough water. They needed constant nagging and one lad needed an adult standing over him to get enough water in him. That's something I would go normally expect even with cubs! The problem seemed to be that cycling created a cooling breeze so they didn't appreciate how much they were sweating. Beyond letting them keep over (not keen) any good ideas for making sure they keep themselves hydrated same as the hats shirts and sunscreen rather than needing constant nagging?

Hello again! I've not posted much for a while as frankly there's not been much to say on "local" issues. However with our summer camp now over and batteries recharged I thought I'd resurface! This years summer camp was "short haul" after longer trips the last two years. We did a cycle tour round the local area. The centre piece was the scouts doing their aeronautics badge and taking control of a glider. Leaders got a go as well and frankly I found it terrifying! I'm quite happy with my feet firmly on terra firma. Anyway with flying being the centre piece there was only one Hollywood blockbuster we could possibly shoot a nod towards for this years musical montage. Full photo gallery here http://12thcambridge.org.uk/scouts-summer-camp-2014-le-tour-de-cams/ Enjoy!

It;s the kind of thing that the cubs will remember as well and hopefully inspire them to further acts of kindness in the future. More power to them.

I'm not going to comment on US law as I'm not familiar with it. However let's assume for a moment that taking the photo is a federal offence (and there seems to be some debate over that). We are talking about a scout on a summer trip, no doubt exciteable taking a few photos. Surely there are more appropriate reactions than to start talking about arrest, fines, prison etc? How about something like "Son, can I ask you not to do that again, you are not allowed to take photos of us working." Job done as far as I am concerned. As for pointing a gun, something tells me that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. I doubt a law enforcement agent would draw their weapon without good reason.

It's not what I hear from scouts in Canada. We have a twin troop there, they have no problems with being coed at all. Like us the scouts just generally want to be scouts. Do boys and girls ignore each other? Of course not. We occasionally have young love blossom. But it never gets in the way. They have separate tents, they are not physically all over each other, they do get on with being scouts rather than just being together. From other troops and units where the occasional couple has stepped over the line the other kids normally deal with it. Last summer we did an exchange with our Canadian friends. We have a far greater proportion of girls than they do. My troop is about 35% at any one time compared to their single solitary girl. Their boys didn't bat an eyelid. Very simple.

That might be the case but the WOSM affiliated entity in each case has the overwhelming majority of scouts. In the UK The Scout Association has about 570K members. Its difficult to get exact numbers for the more minor associations but my understanding is that in each case they are in the low thousands. In Germany my understanding is that some of the non WOSM associations have actually bow become part of WOSM with a new umbrella body set up to cover all of them.

Looking in from outside..... it sounds a little similar to what we call the Young Leader scheme in the UK. Essentially it means our Explorer Scouts (14-18) can be apprentice leaders with Beavers, Cubs or Scouts. It's been very succesfull at breading adult leaders for groups across the country. At my group we have 4 leaders who have come through the scheme. For us YLs are very much part of the leader team and not part of the PLC. They take part in adult leader meetings and are given increasing levels of responsibility as they get older and more experienced. It works really quite well!

Qwazse, congratulations! Your Saturday night must have been very special indeed

Qwazse, congratulations! Your Saturday night must have been very special indeed

So thought I'd do a report back now that my body clock is back to normal as this is a night that will live for a very long time in troop legend. So what happened? We departed Ely as planned on the dot of sun set, and for some hours nothing much of note happened. We split into 3 groups for fast, medium and slow paced scouts and made our way south. First incident around midnight. At a check point, where the track met a road and our support team had set up a check point, two girls felt the call of nature. They went off behind a bush, out of site of the track, and did what they needed to do. Alas they had not appreciated where the road was and as they squatted a police car happened to come up the road and caught them in their head lights. Now while it was not the crime of the century the local constabulary are always going to investigate the presence of two 12 year old girls squatting behind a bush in the middle of nowhere shortly after midnight. All was dealt with by adults present swiftly but still an incident that will raise a chuckle! A couple of hours later and a communication break down..... Exact cause is still a little unclear but one of the check points ended up setting up in the wrong place, to be precise in the car park of a pub that we had not spoken to in advance. Result was a rather irate owner appearing, quite reasonably, in his dressing gown in the small hours and demanding that our support team get lost. I spent Monday afternoon on the phone to him smoothing some ruffled feathers. All is now good and in fact we have been invited back to use his car park as a check point in the future (if we warn him in advance!) in the future, in fact we have been recommended by him not to use the intended check point as it gets very muddy and cars get stuck! Very nice man, pity about circumstances on initial introduction. Approaching Cambridge and I get a phone call to say that the rear group had become "geographically inconvenienced". Moving swiftly on....... Coming through Cambridge itself the group I was with witnessed an incident that at first seemed serious. I though we were witnessing the after math of a stabbing. A man, in his early 20s at a guess, approached us, with no shirt on and clutching his stomach. Clearly distressed and in a lot of pain he moved his hands to show a horrific looking wound to his stomach. Convinced this was a stabbing I called for an ambulance and police. As things unfolded it turned out to be someone very drunk who had somehow managed to become detached from his own colostomy (I think) bag. Seeing a young woman in a little black dress run as fast as she could in towering heels with said bag in her hand shortly afterwards is something that I am not sure should feature on Jeremy Kyle or Monty Python or both. So what did you do on Saturday night?

Just thought I'd swing by and send this back to the top just in case any lovely people had let this slip their mind. *wanders off to load up on carbs and catch some zs before tonight*

Been there and done that. In short there are no short cuts, if his allergy is that servere you have to get it right. That said it's not impossible. I don't know how realistic all the follow is in the USA but this is how we handled it in the UK. 1. For the most part we cooked from scratch. Start everything off from scratch and you don't have to check the ingredients. A bag of onions is a bag of onions, it doesn't contain nuts. Ditto a pack of bacon, a jar of mixed herbs and so on. 2. The most common things to contain nuts are cakes, biscuits, breakfast cereals and anything else baked. Avoid buying these. We found it a good opportunity to get the kids making their own from scratch to bring to camp. Cooking sauces often have trace amounts in as well. 3. An absolute zero tolerance policy on kids bringing nuts to scouts or camp. Research in advance sweets, biscuits etc that are guaranteed to be nut free, there are some out there. Buy them in and run your own tuck shop (sorry, that'a a terribly English phrase!) 4. You can't be 100% certain that you can keep them away from nuts. If you are out in public a member of the public might open a bag of nuts. You need to make sure that all adults, and patrol leaders as well, are properly trained to know the symptoms of anaphylaxis and how to treat it including how to administer the kids epi pen if needs be. 5. Remember that the epi pen is not the solution. All it does is buy you extra time to get them medical treatment. Typically an extra 10-20 minutes. I don't know what it's like in the USA but here in an urban area 10 mins should be sufficient for an ambulance to arrive. In a rural area you might need 30 minutes. In a wild country area you might need an air ambulance to come. SO ensure that they bring multiple epi pens with them, sufficient to give time to get an ambulance or air ambulance to them. Remember that most kids who have grown up with this problem are well geared up for steering clear of nut based foods! Hope that helps. In another story we had a cub scout with a servere allergy to latex as well. Meant going through all the clothes in kit bags of other kids in his tent to check the labels for latex. Hours of fun!

I see quite a lot of former scouts simply because I live pretty close to our HQ and we draw from quite a compact area. I don't think I have any particular expectations from them. I'm always happy to stop for a chat, they vary in their response. Some are delighted to see me and will stand a talk for hours if you let them. Some prefer the acknowledging nod and smile. Some are old enough, particularly from my cub days which I did for many years, to buy me a beer and chew the fat over some memories. I've had a couple of girls running screaming up to me and throw their arms round me. I've had one or two ignore me or fail to recognise me altogether. It takes all sorts! As it happens on Friday I ended up being present when one happened to be passing and fell of her bike and hit her head rather badly. Skip to the rescue! She was actually concussed and needed a trip to hospital. Barely recognised me in the state she was in. Had a lovely phone call from her the next day though to say thank you. But in conclusion, I have no particular expectation but I am glad to say the majority of contact has been very positive!

What Sidney said. Having someone physically standing in front of you asking is an awful lot harder to ignore. Also when it comes to camps an outings simply saying "you will need to get your child to point X at time Y" forces them to organise transport themselves.

You want food, go see the Italians! No one in the world cooks quite like them

Right I'll respond to this one but if others want to know about what has happened in the UK in more detail can I suggest a second thread or you PM me? I am hesitant to drag this away from what was really an internal debate among BSA folks. The last thing I want is to make it look like the UK is bragging. However, seeing as you asked..... 1. Fantastic PR. The 2007 world jamboree was a huge PR boost. The site of tens of thousands of kids from all over the world turning up and being on tv and in the press was fantastic. Having a celebrity chief scout. Started in 2003 if I recall with Peter Duncan (he'd been a children's tv presenter) and now moved onto Bear Grylls. Again big PR coup. Big emphasis on promoting the outdoor adventure side of things. Making sure that those who go on TV as spokesmen and women are generally young and, to be blunt, good looking. Shallow? Possibly. Effective? Definitely. We also get advice on selling scouting sent down to the frontline. The fact is that people do need to be told that photos of formal prize giving ceremonies and parades doesn't sell scouting. Photos of rock climbing, sailing and fires does. It's something that groups have mostly learned now but the message does need constantly reinforcing. 2. Rearranging the age ranges so we have scouts 10-14, explorers 14-18 and network 18-25. This much better reflects natural peer groups than the previous age ranges (scouts 10-15.5, ventures 15.5-21). For me this was the most important thing. Teenagers want to belong to something and you need to give them something they want to belong to. 3. Redesigning the uniform, in particular the trousers. Went from horrible brown nylon affairs to navy blue combats (what you call cargo pants I think??). And when doing it we listened to the kids. a big suggestion was dropping the necker. There was near insurrection from the kids. The tribal element of scouting is important and the group necker reinforces that. So the necker stayed. Those are the main issues. But frankly I could ramble on for ages. We have gripes about our HQ as well. Don't think the grass is always greener. I doubt you'll find anyone that agrees with all HQ do or an HQ decision that everyone agrees with. But then that's the nature of large organisations.

My particular troop has the equipment and adults (7 at full strength, typically 4 on any given evening or camp due to varying comitments) to take more kids, the problem is how many we can physically fit in our hall at one time. Having our own building we have the space to expand. We are currently looking to actively recruit a second SL (equivalent of an SM) to spin off a second troop. Currently none of the other 6 adults at the troop have the time to commit to being that person. Once we find that person we'll get that second troop going. If your disenfranchised countrymen want to hop across the pond we'll take them as long as no prior convictions! And that is the same story across the country. Given troops on a given evening may run out of space but if new troops start there is typically space at a church hall or school or community center some where to fit them. The problem is finding the adults to get those troops going. Here and there there are space issues, particularly in new residential areas where facilities like community centers are often few and far between. But mostly the limiting factor is adults.

Unfortunately what was published by the scout association there was a horendous typo! The number of adults in 2005 was actually 89,712, so the icnrease to 2014 wa 14,596 making up about 14% of the growth. Thread on the UK equivalent of this can be found here complete with an excellent spreadsheet giving full analysis of numbers from 1998 to 2013 http://www.escouts.org.uk/forum/thre...osted-on-here? If you take a look at all the various breakdowns the fact is that you can't find any sector where membership is falling. Scouting is currently undergoing unparrelled success over here. Neither do these numbers tell the whole story. We have got waiting lists everywhere. We are turning kids away right across the country and in all age categories simply because we don't have enough adult volunteers. With sufficient volunteers we'd be through the 600K mark. From a personal point of view I took over as SL in 2009 and had 32 kids on the books night 1. I currently have 36, that is the limit I set based on the space we have. I have 12 on the waiting list which does not include those who automatically get a place because they come through cubs. I will be forced to go to 41 in September when I take the next lot. ie I could take it to 53 by the autumn And that is despite a new troop starting up approx 600 yards from where we meet also in 2009. They are full and have a huge waiting list as well. Peregrinator - you can point at Canada all you want but I'm afraid that the numbers in the UK tell their own story.

Just came across this thread, its something we've been dealing with this side of the pond as well. Historically we used Picasa which we found quite useful in terms of restricting access. However when it got mashed up into Google + it became a complete nightmare to use and actually caused us to have a complete rethink. We now make all photos fully public on our group website. If you are up for doing that then it is possible to integrate picassa/google+ albums with your website. We have a word press site and they have a plug in called Aplinepress which"talks" to google + (I'm not a techie so bare with me) The big advantage is that you get what is effectively unlimited stored photos that comes with google+ with wordpress visibility and useability. Only downside is that photos taken in portrait get displayed in landscape and we've not yet figured out how to fix that particular annoyance"!

Many thanks Dedkad!

Stumbled across this a few days ago. Genius!

Apologies for the slang, I'll make a note of that one for the future!