Promotion Night

In my last post I mentioned that we were having a promotion night out of our own area to try and entice more kids to scouting.

I'm still suprised at the lack of knowledge about girls in scouting. Our troop is almost 50/50 now and judging by the number of girls we got last night (and the number telling us they'll be coming along next week) we may tip the scales to more girls than boys.

I have absolutely no feelings on whether we have more boys or girls in a troop because they're just as capable as each other. In one of the recent issues of scouting for boys, it was noted that Baden Powel would probably have introduced girls into scouting at the same time as the boys, however given the time it wasn't seen as right to do so. The closer we get to a 50/50 split the better however.

We got nine (maybe ten or eleven - a few turned up late and I didn't keep counting them) and they really enjoyed the night. Our scouts having practiced the week before knew everything about the night and because we didn't have to explain it all again to them, they ran the night not me. I just popped backwards and forwards between the groups to make sure they'd got everything. Unfortunately this meant the night ran quicker than before and we'd pretty much wrapped up with half an hour before the end.

So we ran a round of tag bulldog and Master-Mathew-Mark-Luke-John (a memory game).

In all we had about twenty five at the event including our own troop - how nice would it be if we stayed at that level!

Getting ready for our promotion night

Whilst scouting has seen the closure of many small groups in the UK, it has opened some doors for those existing groups. Around our area are several small villages which no longer have troops but still have kids. Our outreach programme aims to encompass these small villages and if we have any interested kids, we’ll reel them in.

So how best to do this? Well our scouts are running the evening. We’re running a simple programme which should be fast and fun. Tonight we did a dry run of what we’re going to be doing.

- Tent pitching – just a simple hike tent
- Peppermint creams
- Cooking bacon over almonds
- Setting up a Trangia and cooking soup
- Simple first aid

Our kids really enjoyed it, so fingers crossed so will the potential-scouts-to-be next week!

End of Term Night

Sometimes we open our doors during a school holiday for various reasons, this time round we opened for a games night.

Except that those who turned up wanted to do a bit of firelighting and practiced setting up a trangia.

And we played some pool. For us as leaders it was quite a relaxing night and even we got a chance to brush up on our skills.