The Group’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place on Tuesday 20th June at our HQ. We were joined by parents, leaders and scouts from all sections to hear about what we have achieved over the past year. This is one of the reports presented that night:
Cubs! What a fantastic time we had last year, by the time we reached last year’s AGM we had already done so much!
2016 was the 100th Anniversary of the Scout section for young people 8 -101/2years old, Cubs! I’m not going to fill you in with the details about what we did last year; I am going to leave that in the capable hands of Adam and Callum. Before I hand over to them, however I want to talk about where we are and where we are going!
I can report we now have 50 young people, yes that’s 50 girls and boys enjoying all that Cubs have to offer. We had a moment of panic about dwindling numbers in Endeavour and its viability (everyone seemed to be turning 11 all at once), but with 12 Cubs it’s as big as some other packs in the country. Now with a beaver colony meeting on a Tuesday we should start to see a steady flow of new Cubs to the pack.
Not only do we have lots of Cubs but we also have a great bunch of adults helping to lead, Sarah and I couldn’t do it without you, so thank you, there is always room for another.
Scouting should be youth led, and I guess the first example of this being the case is with our young leaders, who take their roles very seriously. Poppy Burton gained her young leader buckle having completed all her training as a young leader and is now an adult leader having turned the grand old age of 18. Currently we have two of our young leaders well on their way to gaining their buckles.
As promised at the last AGM we would make being youth led a priority, and we have sat down with the cubs and talked about what they want from the programme. We have put a lot of this in place, for example, LEGO nights, and the recent Nerf Wars night. It was also good to learn we were getting things right, as much of what they wanted to do we already include, water fights, fire lighting, wide games and camping: As a Testwood cub the opportunity to have a night’s away experience, are we feel fantastic; last year the cubs enjoyed up to19 nights away and one or two of them did them all.
We also wanted to be bigger in the community and we are doing ok both as a section and as part of the group. Phyllis our gorgeous Zebra spent last summer in the travel department of the library in Southampton as part of Marwell Zoos Zany Zebra trail. We took part in the Remembrance and St. Georges Day Parades, bag packing at Asda and helped run stalls at the Santa Run. We also took part in a massive clean-up of Goatee beach. It’s things like this that we want to be doing more of, well done Dominik Reynolds for organising (Youth Led).
Here’s some of the other stuff we got up to since the last AGM:
- Phyllis went off to join the other Zany Zebra’s in Southampton.
- We went to Paultons to see if the new Dinosaur themed attractions were cub proof and we met some horrible creatures—no we took the cubs with us!!! I mean giant cockroaches, massive Millipedes and other creepy crawlies.
- Cubs went on Summer Camp to Walton Firs; Hiking, Swimming, Ice Skating, Tunnelling, Climbing, Cooking, Archery and setting fire to things, we also visited Chessington World of Adventures.
- A very ‘Wet Hike’ camp from Matley wood to the Scout HQ.
- The Cubs got medieval in Autumn starting with a visit to Warwick Castle.
- Then a fantastic medieval themed Cub and Parent Camp.
- We were visited by albino hedgehogs.
- We hosted the District Scrapheap challenge and came 3rd.
- We attended the promise campfire and had an amazing sing song and promise renewal to celebrate the start of cub scouting 100 years ago.
- Christmas Sleepover was as crazy as ever, but we loved it!
- County Six a Side football we did our best.
- Plus loads more
Thanks as ever for your support
The Cub Team