By Charlie Smith, Group Scout Leader

As you all know, 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, and many groups and clubs have found it difficult to cope with such an unprecedented experience. This has included the Scouts group: it has led to us being shut down for a long period of time with no face-to-face meetings, which has taken away a lot of what scouting is all about.

As you may or may not know, we have a large amount of rules to strictly follow, which are given to us by the Scouts HQ, but most importantly we follow the government guidelines for both the children, leaders and parents and carers. As you can imagine after this length of time of not having meetings, we are looking forward to starting our meetings up again. We will be following both the government and Scouting guidelines and there will be a lot of people, including children, leaders, parents and carers who will want to make sure that what we are doing is safe for everyone and I can certainly understand this. The best advice I can give is contact your group leader and we will (try to) answer any questions you have on this subject.

I will say that Scouting has not be a priority for many at this current moment in time, but what we are trying to do is to let people know that we are still here and we are part of the community and have been going within Bolnore for almost ten years. Yes, almost ten years within the village! This group started meeting in the school (a very small hall) while we were waiting for the Woodside to be built; we continued to grow within this space until The Woodside was opened in 2014 and we have been there since, working with the hall on events such as the Woodside fete, where we provide the BBQ for the whole event! We also do the annual poppy collection within the village as a group (it is getting more difficult each year as the village gets bigger and bigger!).
Neither of these happened in 2020.

I would just like to say a big thanks to all the leaders that work so hard in the group, giving up their time and expert skills to help so many people. They made my decision to go from the Scout Leader position to the Group Scout Leader easier as I know I can rely on them for support and am looking forward to developing and expanding the group. Having been with the group for nearly ten years, I am excited to see our next stage in Scouting.

2021 will be a new start after the Covid year of last and we are looking for new children who want to start their Scouting adventure. Our Scouting group is open to all children from the age of six with the Beavers, where fun and learning is the name of the game and badges can be earned along the way. From the age of eight, Cubs start developing the traditional Scouting skills we all know and love but also gain valuable life skills and new adventures with lots of new tasks, where we as leaders learn with the Cubs! Scouts start at the age of 11 and there is no stopping them. Learning while having fun is a must, whether it’s cooking odd things, camping, building, archery, climbing or caving, to name a few of the things that get the young people wanting more. As leaders, we love expanding their minds and seeing the children grow and we do this with a fantastic team behind us.

We could not do this without our leaders and our helpers. I think they have as much fun as the children. But we are always looking out for more helpers and leaders if you are interested. You don’t have to have children with us but just be someone who is up for an amazing venture. WE NEED YOU and you NEED TO FIND YOUR INNER ADVENTURER with new ideas and skills to build the foundations of all our young people.

If you are interested in the group have a look at our website and you can contact us on http://bolnorescouts.org.uk or email me at: gsl@bolnorescouts.org.uk.