1st Wash Common Scout Group AGM

Saturday 15th June 2019

Venue: Youlbury Scout Activity Centre

In Attendance: Mike Goddard (Chair), Rob Daniels (Group Scout Leader), Jo longhurst (Treasurer), Paul Fisher (ADC Scouts) , Rachel Fisher (ADC Beavers), Jill Povall, Alex Brooks, Rich Tiley, Rich Kirby, Diana Wheatley (Kennet District Appointments Secretary) Alan Askey (District Executive Committee). The Scouting Families attending the Family Camp.

1) Welcome by Chair Mike introduced himself and welcomed everyone to the AGM. He thanked the outgoing executive committee members and the existing members, the camp organisers (especially Sarah Pook, Kim Tiley and Rachel Fisher), Rob Daniels, Paul Fisher, Eugene Futcher, Matt Doran, Louise Clarkson and family, the Fundraising Committee - Mel Blatchford and Jacky Daley. People involved in the recent 73 mile Brownsea Island to Wash Common Walk – Chris Hall, Phil Hamshaw, Mike Eaton, Rob Daniels, Stu Meades, Peter Howard, Clare King).

2) Address by Diana Wheatley Diana thanked the executive committee members, section leaders and assistant leaders for all their work which makes scouting possible. In the past year, Pete Jeffreys has become interim District Commissioner and provided some good focus and direction to the district. In the coming year the district hopes to appoint a District Explorer Scout Commissioner.

3) Committee Changes GSL Rob Daniels nominated Mike Goddard to become Chair. Acting Treasurer Jo Longhurst was nominated to take the role officially and accepted the position. Acting Subs Treasurer and Secretary Jane Oliver was nominated to take the roles officially and accepted the positions. The Charities Trustees were agreed • Rachel Fisher • Paul Fisher • Rob Daniels • Chris Worby • Joanna Longhurst • Jillian McCaffrey • Richard Tiley All positions were unanimously agreed.

4) Group Scout Leader (GSL) Report GSL Report For those that don’t know me, I’m Rob Daniels I’m the Group Scout Leader. My job is to support the Leaders of the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts at Wash Common and generally make sure the Scouty Stuff happens. Having been a Scout Leader for the past 20ish years its been great to get involved with the other sections too over the past year. I’ve been Ten Pin Bowling with the Beavers and making pancakes with Dalby Cub Pack. I even attended my first Cub camp for 30 years with Cavalier at Linkenholt and I promise never to mention the casserole again. Each year 1st Wash Common has to provide Census figures to HQ – from Feb 131 young members, 32 leaders, and 14 exec members. With the opening of Thorngrove Scout Group in Woolton Hill we have been able to reduce our waiting list significantly to around 12 months. Just to give you a flavour of some of the highlights over the past year from the sections. We had a good turnout for Remembrance parade which along with St Georges day remains the two most important dates in the Scouting calendar. It’s really important that we are out in the community not only to raise our profile for the HQ project but to actually make a difference too so events like Cromwell Scouts working with the Canal Trust to clear rubbish from a section of canal, Scouts helping at the recent D-Day 75 events for Greenham Trust and the Corn Exchange and the Beavers carol singing at an old peoples home continue to be really important part of our identity. One of the more unusual events was Cavalier Cubs camping at Berkshire Showground – during the Royal Berkshire Show – the Leaders loved that one – not stressful at all! Falkland and Cromwell Scout Troops had a brilliant Christmas camp at Ferny crofts. I talked last year about ensuring we continue to Invest in Scouting and keeping it “business as usual” while we build the new HQ. We now have a Quartermaster in Dave Manton and have purchased new tents, camping and cooking equipment for use by our young people. As well as improving the recycling facilities in the hut, from now on we will only be giving out leather woggles rather than plastic to reduce plastic consumption. Last year I also talked about reducing the admin burden on our leaders and we continue to do this – we’ve centralised some of the uniform and badges for new starters to save the sections having to purchase them from their own funds and introduced a joining fee to cover the costs of this. We’re also making better use of Online Scout Manager – our Section management tool which now means I can now directly send emails to all rather than thru the section leaders.

We’ll also be using Scout Manager to manage the monthly subscription. We have trialled it with our leaders and its working really well. Very soon everyone will get an email asking them to move their subscription to Direct Debit which we can then manage through OSM rather than manually as we currently have to. (Don’t forget to cancel your standing order!) Phase two will be for activities / trips and camps so the need to bring cash and dig out chequebooks will be removed – it can all be managed online and save the leaders time from having to bank it all. Recruitment – We have a new cub Leader joining Dalby Pack next week – Kate Westall. We now have a new Mentoring and Training Coordinator in Jill McCaffery. Welcome onboard and thank you! Jill will be onboarding new leaders and also checking that all our current leaders training and qualifications are up to date. We do still need more leaders – especially for our Cub Sections - Dalby and Cavalier Tuesday and Thursdays – please come and speak to me. Paul Fisher has been awarded the Silver Wolf not for his hair but 20 years good service to Scouting. Rich Tiley has just been awarded his Wood Beads for completing his Leader Training I have a certificate here as Mr Mike Goddard has completed 5 years as a Leader Id like to thank our executive committee – the past few months have been challenging. We’ve thrown a lot of things at them and we’ve had some interesting and sometimes difficult late night discussions. The HQ project is not straight forward and there have been and continue to be, ‘bumps in the road’. I’d like to thank them and our chair Mike for their continued support, guidance and counsel. We will get there… and it will be amazing! Finally, I’d like to thank the Leaders, assistants and parent helpers of the sections. You will see from the section reports, the amazing amount of hard work and effort that goes into providing a huge range of activities these volunteers provide. These are not paid employees. They are giving up several hours of their week – every week - to put on an incredible programme for our young people. So THANK YOU!

5) Hut Project Mike provided an update on the Hut Project. We have just received a planning refusal for the new HQ. It seems The Council is in not happy with the Second entrance despite it being their recommendation. We will take advice on our next steps either to appeal or submit a new application. We have agreed Heads of Terms with Falkland Cricket Club to purchase a about an acre of land cornering Wheatland’s Lane and Essex Street. The existing hut and plot will be sold -we now have Full planning permission for a 4 bedroom detached house on Battery End. The purchase of the new plot of land and construction of a new hut will be funded by proceeds from the sale, grants, fundraising events and matched funding. The move to the new site is expected to happen within 2 to 3 years.

6) Treasurer’s Report Jo reported that as at 31 March 2018 the main account had ~£27k and the fundraising account had £90k approximately. The increase on last year was mainly due to fundraising activities. Helen reported that the accounts required an independent review which could cost ~£300. She welcomed suggestions for less expensive alternatives. Appointment of Paul Greenan, TaxAssist 35 Bartholomew street, Newbury was approved.

Beaver Section Report Our leadership teams are always changing and last summer we said goodbye to Dragonfly (Sam Watters) and Hedgehog (Wai Thomas). We now have Night Jar (Liane Green) and Magpie (Michelle Davis) leading Holborne colony assisted by Hare (Emma Lawson), Pigeon (Dan Roch) and Hedgehog (Kirsty McKenzie).

I have continued to do all of the admin for both colonies and hope to return to physically helping with the colonies in the near future. We are always looking to recruit new leaders as by having a larger leadership team takes the pressure off the current leaders as all have young families, meaning that other commitments sometimes need to come first. I would like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all of the Beaver leaders, and section assistants who give up their time to make the running of the two colonies possible.

Scouting in Wash Common is still just as popular as ever and we continue to have a joining list. Although currently the list is lower than it has been for years with only about 35 names on it, of which 9 are aged 6 and over and therefore missing out on Scouting. This large reduction in our list is due to the successful opening of 1st Woolton Hill Thorngrove Beavers. The new group opened last September with a Beaver colony and Cub pack and we gave them the names from our list of those youngsters that lived in Woolton Hill. This now enables the names on our list to have more of a chance of getting into Scouting.

We always strive to deliver a balanced program of activities to the Beavers to enable them to achieve their badges while having fun and gaining new experiences. Over the past year the youngsters have been involved in a number of activities of which I have listed some of them below • Archery evening • About space • Remembrance parade • Pottery painting • A visit to local residential home • Made and sold items at Xmas craft fair • Cruise with Santa on Hungerford Rose • Ten pin bowling • Magic workshop • Making pancakes • Treasure hunt around town Squirrel

Cavalier Cub Pack Section Report

We camped out: In September 2018, Cavalier Cubs attended the Berkshire County Show at Newbury Showground - Camping overnight on our event pitch and demonstrating back to basics scouting.

In March 2019, Cavalier Cubs had an early camp at Linkenholt Activity centre - themed around Brexit and celebrating European Countries, including food from many different countries. During our pack meetings: We experimented with long exposure photography - producing a wonderful written message in lights. We undertook a number of STEM experiments, including making Lava Lamps, Electronics, Aerodynamics, Water displacement and making Robots. We completed a number of night hikes and outdoor activities, unfortunately the bad weather affected our Star Gazing and Astronomy We had a very extensive First Aid skills over 2 pack meetings, including Burns, Bleeding, Bandages, Resuscitation and Defibrillators. We learnt about Global issues, and Scouting around the world - and we played some different games from various countries. We had fun Grass Sledging, Sailing, and several BBQs And we attended the District Join-in-Jamboree, celebrating the Scout Jamborees in different countries around the world.

Dalby Cubs – AGM Update June 2019 Over the course of the last 12 months Dalby Cub pack have had lots of fun and done many exciting activities. We currently have three leaders working with the children and have a new leader joining later in June. We have good support from parent helpers and I’d like to say thank you them for all their help. We like to offer lots of skills based activities, with the Cubs having lots of opportunities to work on activity and challenge badges: The Cubs have been out and about this year to laser tag, grass sledging, bowling and archery. One big highlight was a great evening at the Winchester Science Centre for their Astronomer Activity Badge. We have completed activities for the Artist, Astronomer, Backwoods cooking, Entertainer, International, Local Knowledge, Physical Education, Scientist activity badges and Emergency Aid level 1. We have also worked on the Outdoor, Adventure Personal and World Challenge badges with four Cubs from Dalby achieving their Chief Scout’s Silver Award last year. We have also been out on some fantastic walk and hikes (one each ½ term) that have included a Nature Detectives tree identification and bridge building at The Chase (with lots of wet feet!!!), a night hike with wide games at Greenham and the annual Dalby Cubs chip shop challenge around the town centre. We are all looking forward to another exciting 12 months starting with our Youlbury Camp in July.

Cromwell Scouts had a great summer camp in Exmoor at Horners Wood Scout campsite last summer. The activities were chosen by the scouts including canoeing, rafting, paddle boarding and coasteering to name a few. For certain Scout Leaders who like to search the internet and find the weirdest but most enjoyable places to visit we started our Summer Camp with a visit and lunch during our journey at the Bakelite Museum in Somerset, full of the most tatty, old things that no one wants but everyone was ecstatic to see. In September, our older 7 scouts organised an expedition to The New Forest staying at Foxlease Girl Guide campsite. They agreed to come an extra hour a week to meet as a group and they worked out the logistics of the camp, which they all successfully all completed including their individual reports. Four of those youngsters achieved the Scouts “Chief Scouts Gold Award”. We shared a camp in December with Falkland troop and cycled in the New Forest with a festive Christmas tree, lights, meal and crackers and family board games in the evenings. The scouts did some volunteer work with the Canal Trust and got an understanding of the management of the canal path and maintaining the growth of the trees onto the canal. We had a night at the New Era theatre delivered by enthusiastic volunteers one of whom was an ex scout. Scouts also had the opportunity of a navigation skills weekend held at Hungerford. All of those attending learnt valuable map and compass skills and achieved some of the navigation badge work. We have welcomed several new Scouts and Cubs the last six months and have done some cooking, practice with knife and axe, navigation work and hikes. Each patrol in the troop has organised a Troop evening themselves and the first one for the fire safety badge was educational and delivered through games, videos and a quiz.

1st Wash Common Falkland Troop

Falkland troop is currently running with 23 Scouts and we have a leadership team of 5 leaders.

Since the last AGM we have taken part in a number of activities including the Scouts creating outfits to take part in a fashion show, completing the astronautics badge, we have enjoyed a number of cooking evening including an unmarked tin challenge, the Scouts helped at the Greenham Arts D-Day event serving teas and coffees, the Scouts built land boats that were propelled by a desk fan and a number of Scouts took part in the 1000 mile challenge walking from Walbury Hill to the Bowlers Arms to raise funds for the hut.

This term we will be working on the Team Work and Team Leader challenge awards and later in the term we will be spending an evening sailing in Theale. Due to lack of interest from the Scouts we are not holding a summer camp however we have offered a number of weekend camps and we are looking at planning a long weekend in September.

Looking forward we will continue to work on the challenge awards in an aim for more Scouts to achieve the Chief Scout Gold Award.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the leaders and the parents for their continued support.

The Leaders of Falkland Troop