Facing our challenges

 Today which just happens to be the 1,050th post as I'm working through the final things to be done before I'm away we'll take a look at some of the challenges we face.

There was a period during the 1990's where membership in Scouts and GirlGuiding was falling, not super dramatically as much as sometimes the popular press reports things around us is prone to do.

Sometimes you'd swear because we've been around for over hundred years, are seen as part of "The Establishment" with friends in high places, some take a certain pleasure in trying to knock us down.

Some of that was due to competition from the growth of youth outdoor challenges sector with people like PGL and some schools doing similar things to us, some because we're not uber cool rebranding ourselves frequently and at times we're guilty of not blowing our own trumpets.

One of the good things is the odd incident aside and with a lot of attention to safeguarding, we in Scouting are seen trustworthy, having value in a world that certainly has changed from I was a young lad, because the values and lessons Baden-Powell learned and promoted are universal and time honoured.

I can't say it enough, Covid and the Pandemic brought us as society a lot of issues beyond the deaths and damage to individuals medically.

It disrupted everyday socialization, language development and raised instances of anxiety especially with children and young adults,educators, welfare services and ourselves are dealing with but one of things we know is our programs, delivered with care, are helping.

Learning about things, learning to care for one another, learning facing setbacks to dust yourself off and get back upon your own two feet are all things valued and of help.

And parents and guardians know this so they are getting their children into our membership so it's not that surprising we are going through one of those periods where "The Waiting List" across the U.K in Scouts is around 107,000.

What is going on is simplifying the systems to transmit the neccessary training, reduce where we can unecessary paperwork and "red tape" that slows things down and puts off would be volunteers.

The way we atract volunteers is being reviewed and systems for interviews coupled with final selection so we'll be able to reduce that wait although across the voluntary and community sector we feel goverments could do more to help with volunteering in general.

We'll get there.