Cambridgeskip

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 blockbu

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

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 Canadi

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 need

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

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 o

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

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 th

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.

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 tec

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!

Not sure if this should go in this form or international but nevertheless....... After taking a one year break in 2013 my troop's annual charity fund raiser, the Sun Run, is back. my merry band of scouts will be up all night on 21 June taking part in the Sun Run, an over night run, trek, crawl or whatever else it takes to cover the 18 miles from the city of Ely, along the river Cam back to our HQ in Cambridge. Setting off on the dot of sun set, 9.34pm, they will be aiming to finish before sun rise at 4.38am the next day. This year they are raising money for Child's Play, a char