Author: 1st Clifton (York) Sea Scouts

Saturday 9th January 2016

As always, we welcome as much help as possible but as we will be distributing flyers with our 2016 dates at the same time as collecting papers this week, a few extra hands would be enormously helpful.

Any scouts or parents who could possibly spare an hour or two will be rewarded with tea and cake!

Flyers with 2016 collection dates will be available in the entrance porch from next week. Please help yourself and do please encourage friends and neighbours to leave their papers out for us too. A list of the streets we collect from can also be found in the porch.

Papers can also be brought to the hut at any other time and left by the skip. We have placed boxes under the shelter of the skip for you to put your papers in so there is no need to use your expensive carrier bags!

A huge thank you to the parents, scouts and even a few little beavers who gave up their Saturday morning to help us with our paper collecting and tidy up at the scout hut today.

We kept them all extremely busy – driving, stacking papers, mowing, strimming, trimming, raking and generally tidying up. We hope you’ll agree they did an excellent job and the grounds now look very neat and presentable again.

 

 

Our younger members were offered a taste of real sea scout life down at the river yesterday. The lingering mist didn’t seem to dampen their spirits and any nerves soon vanished once they were out on the water having fun.

The Beavers were all able to take a boat trip and some also had a go at learning to row themselves.

The Cubs got a bit more adventurous, heading out in kayaks and canoes either on their own or in pairs.

With the sun finally out later in the day, the cubs learnt why eskimos love their boats and showed off their teamwork and balancing skills. We are very grateful once again to all our leaders and instructors for organising and running this fantastic day and giving up their time to offer this opportunity to the children.

Over 150 beavers, cubs, scouts, parents and friends spent a fabulous Sunday afternoon together for our family day and barbecue at Snowball last weekend.
Our leaders provided an exciting selection of games and activities to keep the children happy and a busy team of parent volunteers did a wonderful job preparing, cooking, serving and clearing up the barbecue.

Here are just a few of the lovely comments we’ve received from parents after the event.

An amazing day, thanks to everyone who organised it. It was great seeing both children and adults all having an enjoyable time.

Great event, great food.

My children really enjoyed themselves, especially the tug of war!

Thank you to everyone involved who helped to make the day such a great success.

1. Group AGM – Tue 14th July 7.30pm at the scout hut, Green Lane

Please do try and come along to this meeting if you possibly can – we expect it to last around 30 minutes to 1 hour at most. Group members are also very welcome to attend and can even bring their parents along too!

Whilst there are some formal and legal requirements that must be dealt with during this meeting it is also an opportunity to find out what the Group and our young people have been up to over the last year and to meet and get to know the Leaders, Committee and other parents. You will shortly be receiving an email from the Group Treasurer containing various reports, accounts and other information summarising the Group’s year. Please take the time to read these documents even if you are unable to attend the meeting so that you can appreciate all that the Group has acheived this year and how our children have benefitted.

2. Volunteer support brainstorming session

Immediately after the AGM, for anyone who is able to stay on and join the discussion, we will be looking at all the tasks that the Group needs to cover to be able to run well and doing some brainstorming to work out how we find and recruit volunteers to help with these tasks. Everyone is welcome to attend – the more ideas the better!

3. Children’s University

The Group has recently registered as a ‘Learning Destination’ with the York branch of the Children’s University scheme, enabling our members to use time spent working towards badges as credit towards their CU Passport. Information about this can now be found on our website in the section Things to Know / Children’s University.

4. Scout news

Reports and photos from the recent HMS Bristol trip and York Canoe Race can both be found in the Scout News section of our website.

5. Marquee help needed

We have another date that one of our marquees has been hired out (a bonus for Group funds!) and we will need a few volunteers to help put it up and take it down. If you are able to help with this please send an email to support@yorkseascouts.org.uk or speak directly to Peter Swann. Thu 16th July 7pm and Sunday 19th July 10am – meet at the Scout Hut at those times in both cases.

Finally, thank you very much to everyone who turned out to help put up marquees for the Apollo festival only to find we had been let down by the organisers and they only required 1 of our 3 marquees. Still it was our largest one they needed and the many hands made the job so much quicker and easier. Thank you.

1st Clifton Sea Scouts is a thriving group currently supporting over 120 young people and offering them a wide range of opportunities for personal development and adventure.

This is all made possible by the tireless work of our Group Scout Leader, Peter Swann, and an excellent team of Leaders and Assistants. It’s their outstanding commitment and dedication that enables our young people to enjoy and learn from an exciting and varied programme year in & year out. If the Group is to continue this excellent work for both current and future members we really do need more help to be able to acheive this.

In particular, we are looking for:

Support for Friday night boating with scouts

This is a particularly challenging time for our Leaders as we entrust them with the safety and security of our children in the water during those sessions, especially as we have such a large group of young people at present. Extra parent volunteers at the scout hut and at the riverside will make the lives of our Leaders very much easier and the experience better for all our young people.

Van and minibus drivers

It would be nice to have a larger group of volunteer drivers available to call upon when needed. For most people, a normal full driving licence is all that is required although there are some restrictions, mostly depending on when the licence was issued. As well as Friday night boating sessions we require drivers on paper collection days and for other ad-hoc events. Relevant training can be arranged if needed.

More Section Leaders, Assistants and helpers

More Assistant Leaders are urgently required across all sections. In addition, some of our Section Leaders are ready to hand over the reins to new blood. Anyone interested in these roles will be fully supported and assisted with a handover period and training. Maybe you know a family member, friend, neighbour or colleague who has the perfect skills or experience – please encourage them to talk to us and find out more.

Behind the scenes

Supporting Peter and the other Leaders is our Group Executive Committee led by Group Chair, Tony Hale. The Committee is responsible for the maintenance of property and equipment, financial administration, insurance, fundraising and assisting with leader recruitment; essentially ensuring that the Group has the facilities and resources needed to deliver good Scouting.

Members of the Group Executive Committee are elected at our AGM. The AGM is open to anyone who has a child in or any other interest in the Group. This is your chance to find out what the Group has been doing during the year and ask any questions you might have.

Our AGM will take place on Tuesday 14^th July 2015 at 7.30pm at the scout hut. All welcome.

For the last few years, much of the additional behind the scenes work has been taken on by our Leaders with the help of a small group of regular volunteers. We’d like to ease the load from these people and let them concentrate their time on looking after their Sections and providing a fantastic programme for the young people.

Please consider whether you could help by getting involved in one of the following ways:

Join the Group Executive Committee

We currently have space for more parent members to get involved in this important role. No particular qualifications are required except a willingness to actively participate in meetings and accept the responsibilities of acting as a charity trustee. Meetings are usually held once every two months.

Hut maintenance

We need a coordinator who would find out what work needs to be done, arrange supplies and oversee helpers on maintenance days. This would preferably be someone with some general DIY knowledge & skills.

We also need skilled workers to help with particular repairs plus any willing volunteers (skilled or unskilled!) who can help to clean, tidy and assist with general repairs.

Waste paper collections

Paper collection days can be fairly chaotic affairs so we would like someone who can organise and supervise our helpers, making sure that everyone knows what they need to do and keep everyone busy.

Of course, we still need many hands of parents and children to help load papers into the van and trailer and to unload and stack papers into the skip.

Bag2School collections and other fundraising

Bag2School textile collections are a useful and easy fundraiser that we run twice a year so we are looking for someone who can be responsible for booking and coordinating these collections. We’d also like to start to build a team of people who can look into and organise other ways of raising funds for the Group.

What now?

If you can help with any of the above, have any questions or would just like more information about volunteering with the Group, please email support@yorkseascouts.org.uk and your queries will be forwarded to the most appropriate person to deal them.

Some of our scouts will remember sharing some fun boating time last summer with a fellow scout from South Yorkshire, Hannah Hunt.

Hannah had challenged herself to gain every possible scout badge and needed to undertake some watersports to qualify for some of them. We welcomed Hannah to our group to help her out with these badges and we are delighted that she has now been able to complete her challenge.

Hannah is now making news around the country as the first scout in the UK to complete every badge. Read more here – can you spot one of our leaders in Hannah’s video?!

Fantastic acheivement Hannah – well done!!