Welcome back!

The summer holiday is drawing to a close and schools will reopen in the next few days. We hope you’ve had a fabulous break, that your young people are energised and ready for a new term of scouting.

The week ahead (2nd September 2019 onwards)

Group (All sections)

Penistone Show

Over the summer break, we sent out an email asking for volunteers to help our scout group staff the car park for Penistone Show on Saturday 14th September. The organisers kindly pay our group to provide this provision. A number of people replied; however, we are seeking addition people to please help out. We will be working two shifts: 07:30 to 13:00 and 12:00 to 18:00. If you can assist with either of these, please let Rob know.

Annual General Meeting

The group Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held at the Scout Hut on 26th September. As members of the Scout Council, all parents, guardians, leaders and youth members are invited to attend. We will be welcoming you from 19:15 with the session starting at 19:30, lasting roughly one hour. The AGM will incorporate youth led presentations as well as a short Executive Committee output which comprises the necessary formal elements. Section meetings that normally take place on a Thursday will either be held on a different night or be cancelled.

Volunteer vacancies

At the start of the summer break, Rob emailed all parents and guardians a relatively long update. Part of this highlighted volunteer gaps we need to fill at Penistone. Due to changes in our existing leader team’s personal circumstances (promotions at work, childcare changes etc) we have a number of sections that are very low on adult support.

The young people’s safety and wellbeing is of utmost priority. We will not allow section meetings to take place where there will be insufficient adults. To address this, we urgently need more adults to please step forward. Parent rotas will help us combat part of the volunteer gap, but we need people who can support sections at least a couple of times a month.

If you ‘d like to understand more about what is involved, please let Rob know and he will gladly meet up and have an informal chat. As you’ll have hopefully seen from a post we made earlier this week, we need busy people – we wouldn’t want people who would never do anything!

Similarly, we have two vacancies on the Executive Committee:

If you could fulfill either of these roles, please click the link and find out more.

Diary dates and future events

We have a number of events already in the diary for the coming twelve months. Many are regular items (Remembrance Sunday, Christmas Gathering, December camps and so on) however, we also have a number of placeholders, e.g. Scout/Explorer summer camp 2020 etc. These are all kept in the Group Diary; this can be found on the website here. You can synchronise these to your personal electronic diaries, which should help keep on top of things. Similar to our mention of needing adult volunteers for section meetings, we are also growing our team who plan and run the weekend or longer events. Without those people, we can’t put on group camps or the longer trips away.

Beavers

Section meetings

Beavers leaders have met and discussed the activities the beavers requested at the end of last term. When we start back we will have a session building the ideas of working together. We will set the new lodge leaders and build some bridges with newspaper (that was why we needed you to be saving clean newspaper). We are excited for the activities we have planned over the term. On this note, you should have received an email from the Beaver Leader team. We are aware that some people’s went to their spam folder, so if you’re a Beaver parent and haven’t seen an email from us in the last fortnight, please check your spam/junk folder and mark our message as, “Not junk”.

Millstones – please remember, we no longer meet at Thurlstone School. We have relocated to the Scout Hut on Friday evenings. (Same meeting time as before)

Future Beaver events

None to highlight at this time

Cubs

Section meetings

Similar to our Beaver colonies, many of the cub packs plan on holding pack forums, welcoming new members and getting reacquainted with cub meetings.

Raptors – will be starting back on the 12th September and not this week. A reminder to please always send your cub with a water bottle and dressed suitably, for us possibly being outside for some or all of the session.

Future Cub events

None to highlight at this time

Scouts

Section meetings

Enigma – start back on Monday 9th September.

Wibbles & Viernes: please meet at your usual section times at the Scout Hut. It’s likely we will spend the evening welcoming new members, juggling the troop following some of the older members having moved on to Explorers and getting back into the swing of Scouting.

Future Scout events

Rother Valley Country Park – sadly, the people who manage Rother Valley have been in touch to say that the algae problem is not yet resolved. To this end, they have cancelled our booking and will be issuing the group with a refund. This means the planned trip for Friday 6th September has been cancelled. We will work with parents/guardians to arrange refunds (or move the monies to other events) on a case-by-case basis.

Brunts Barn – we had planned on taking ten young people to Brunt’s Barn for their Expedition Challenge in October. Unfortunately, the provider has had to cancel this booking. They are sending through new dates for 2020 so the young people don’t miss out.

Alton Towers – Those who are booked on to our trip (21st/22nd September) will receive an event Briefing pack in the 7-10 days.

Explorers

Section meetings

Explorers will be at the Scout Hut for our normal times unless otherwise notified ahead of the meeting on Tuesday evening.

Future Explorer events

Alton Towers – Those who are booked on to our trip (21st/22nd September) will receive an event Briefing pack in the 7-10 days.

Adult volunteers

Leaders

All hands meeting – our first leader meeting of the school year will be Monday 2nd September. The initial cascade went out the 1st August and the formal invite last week. Please check your Scout email for details. Those unable to attend in person can dial in via Microsoft Teams using Scout email credentials and the link in the aforementioned invite.

Executive Committee

Exec meeting – our first meeting will be Tuesday 10th September between 19:30 and 21:00 at Rob’s house. Those unable to attend in person can dial in via Microsoft Teams using Scout email credentials a link to this will be shared shortly.

Previously:

Group Camp

The first set of photographs from our Group Camp in July can be found here. Rob will get the second batch processed and uploaded in the next fortnight.