Message from the CC

And so as we begin another great scouting year in South London you will see from this new publication, just some of the fantastic activities our groups and sections have undertaken in 2019.

From camps to badge courses, from adult training to young leader training here in South London we strive to give our young people a great scouting opportunity, with the #Skillsforlife we provide to them week in and week out. We are also keeping up the county led International activities this year with a unit attending the European Jamboree in Poland in July. I wish them and any other group attending an event abroad a great trip. Please make sure you get those VA Forms in asap.

Congratulations and well done to all of you for providing these challenging programmes, it really does make a difference to the young people. An example of this is shown by an increase in our census figures for 2020, so please keep up the good work.

I look forward to seeing a lot more pictures and reports of the upcoming events and activities planned in South London for 2020.

So sit back, relax with a nice hot drink and have a read through our next edition of South Circular.

We hope you enjoy your read.

Darren

Some big anniversaries being celebrated this year

The 4th Balham and Tooting are celebrating their 110th year in 2020. With this in mind they have created an Anniversary Badge for the Group and a number of planned events to be held throughout the year to celebrate the occasion. Look out for more details as we get them.

8th Royal Eltham are celebrating a fantastic 100 years at the end of February

1st New Cross (The Greys) are also celebrating 100 years

New website alert!

Waylands Campsite run by Southwark Scouts have launched their new look website and online booking - take a look here

Scouts on film

Lewisham district

In September, award-winning photographer and filmmaker Kelvin Murray, filmed a short film with Lewisham Scouts. Over 2 days, a professional crew of 12 with 1 ton of gear (and a sailing boat) visited 3 locations - all scout huts chosen for their charming features.

In the film, we see our determined young Scouting heroes take on the most ambitious activity badges - all inside Scout huts. It's a sweet, fun and heartwarming little film that we're really proud of.

The 7 Cubs and Scouts who feature in the film were outstanding. They were all selected at a casting session earlier in the year, and were so focused and enthusiastic - a real credit to Scouting.

A HUGE thank you to all those Leaders, Cubs, Scouts, Parents and Lewisham District who supported this project along the way. A special thanks to 1st New Cross, 12th Lewisham North, 9th Sydenham, 3rd Crofton Park & 11th Forest Hill.

The film will be revealed soon - so watch this space!

News from South London Foxes - EuroJam Unit

With less than 6 months to go to the European Jamboree 2020 in Poland, the Unit has enjoyed bonding at various camps, events and fundraising. The Unit took great pleasure in choosing the group name of South London Foxes and have agreed on patrol names of Corsac, Fennec, Arctic, and Swift.

We’ve improved our water skills including kayaking and dragon boat racing at ESSA Water Activities Centre. We’ve enjoyed a day out in London completing a photo scavenger hunt taking in the sights around Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and even a trip over to the Battersea Dogs Home.

A lot of us also got to experience the Lord Mayor’s show for the first time, as we took the opportunity to fundraise by selling Programmes along the parade – despite the wet weather our spirits weren’t dampened!

Coming up we are looking forward to our next event at Frylands campsite in March, and beginning the short count down to the summer and what is bound to be an unforgettable experience.

Royal Greenwich Cubs Badge Day

36 cubs cooked and cleaned their way through Waverley Crescent if it was glass or did not move the cubs cleaned it more than once. They made some well done cub cakes just as the DC popped in and also cooked either vegetable curry with items some had never seen or tasted before or a chicken Carbonara. In the contest of the day the cubs in teams had to put pillow cases on pillows, a duvet cover on a duvet to make their and then strip them again in the fastest time.

Sophie from 36W said “I had fun and played lots of fun games, I liked making beds and cooking.“ Sophie had arrived at the district event not knowing any other children and soon made new friends.

Southwark Explorers Treasure Hunt

35 Explorers from Phoenix & Dulwich Explorer Units took part in a joint Round London Treasure Hunt on a cool Tuesday evening at the end of November. The scheme took them from the steps of St Paul’s to Waterloo bridge on a circuit via the south and north banks. Two teams achieved all the answers with the tie break decider being the number of pizza restaurants they’d found!

Warhammer Nights

I’m a leader with the 12th Lewisham south but I’m also a warhammer fan. Warhammer / games workshop is a lot like scouts. I’ve worked with the Bromley store for about 3 years. I try and get Kids that struggle with social situations envolved as allot of people who go there also struggle in social situations and have overcome this through Warhammer. Ben is fantastic with the young people, he’s calm, patient and caring. Like scouting warhammer has its own little family who understand each other and are happy to help each other out. As a warhammer player people told me I couldn’t paint orks pink or like girls. Well from that moment on I showed them there’s no such word as can’t! I even came second in army’s on parade, their big competition, with my ork circus. my two loves are scouting and warhammer.

So thank you warhammer for giving scouts the chance to do it. Zoe”

If you are looking to get into Warhammer, Scouts is a great way to do so and it sounds like the folk over in Bromley are a great place to start 👍 for more info on the badge, follow below link

Royal Greenwich 20 4 20 DC Challenge

Work is under way across Royal Greenwich completing the DCs 20 4 20 challenge, groups have been baking, tasting, playing, exploring and having great fun!

20 Challenges for your group/Unit to complete from Jan 8th to May 27th

(That’s 20 weeks!)

As a Group/Unit…

1. Give 20 hrs Service to one of our Centres

2. Gain 20 Activity Badges

3. Walk 20 miles

4. Take part in 20 hours of District events

5. Collect the signatures of 20 Leaders from other Groups/Units in the District

6. Fill 20 Smarties tubes with 20ps.

7. Gain 20 Nights Away

8. Take 20 photos of Group/Unit activities and post them on the District Facebook page (These photos are in addition to any taken for the Challenges)

9. Bake 20 cakes

10. Play 20 new games

11. Sing 20 Camp Fire Songs

12. Fit 20 members into a tent (no Marquees or Mess Tents allowed!)

13. Eat 20 new foods

14. Visit 20 other meeting places in the District

15. Get a different item for each of the 20 letters in ROYAL GREENWICH SCOUTS

16. Run 20 metres in a 20 legged race

17. Do 20 good deeds

18. Take a picture of the twenty youngest members of your Group/Unit

19. Take a picture of the twenty oldest members of your Group/Unit

20. Think of a challenge involving the number 20 and complete it.

New Enquiry System Launched

Our new ‘become a scout’ and ‘volunteer with us’ pages provide a more engaging user experience and automatically sends the enquiries to join and volunteer, that you want to receive, to your chosen recipient(s).

our new getting involved website showcases scouting across South London provides every group and unit with their own dedicated page on the county website, which lists where they meet, which sections have spaces to join and their adult vacancies and opportunities to volunteer enables prospective volunteers to search for opportunities to get involved near them provides a search function that enables parents/guardians to search for their local colony, pack, troop or unit and make an enquiry directly to the group/unit (that have spaces), for their youngster to get involved

Your page has been created using the information you have provided in our requests in June, September and November last year. If you need to make any changes you can find out details of how to do this in the attached guide which has been designed to help you understand the new system, talks you through how you can easily keep your page up to date and provides some pointers on how to effectively recruit more adults to help you provide amazing scouting to your members. You can also find lots of information and tools to help you get the most out of the system at www.southlondonscouts.org.uk/tools

You can access the site now at www.join.southlondonscouts.org.uk. From tomorrow this URL will also be linked to the ‘Become a scout’ and ‘ Volunteer with us’ areas of the county website

We really hope you like what we have developed. We know it is going to provide a great service to those wanting to join scouting across South London and is also a great tool for your group or unit to use to help you promote how people, young and older, can get involved.

Join the county team

We are looking for more volunteers to join the county team in the following roles:

DCC People

ACC Beavers

ACC International

County Treasurer

You not only get great satisfaction in shaping scouting for young people in south london, you also get a great scarf!

We are also looking for people to join our finance and premises committees at our next AGM, if you are interested in finding out more please contact Martyn Bain.

County Youth Team

Our county youth team is taking shape lead by Alfie Francis our Deputy County Youth Commisioner. The team have started planning their first events and more information on these will be coming out soon.

The team have a suggestion inbox for any ideas or comments from other young people, leaders, supporters if you wish to get in touch contact youthideas@southlondonscouts.org.uk

Useful links