Group Scout Leader’s Report
So we managed to get through COVID! We had two difficult years of rules, regulations and lockdowns. Where other groups suffered significantly due to loss of income or members leaving. We weathered the storm in reasonably good health, thankfully! To say COVID didn’t have an impact is simply not true though, because many plans we had were delayed or cancelled and many of our team didn’t have an easy time with it, particularly whilst we were online. But here we are in our 8th year, still going and back even bigger and stronger. In our census this January we counted 130 young people in our group and with our adult Network and leaders we have 175 members. This is amazing when you consider we started in 2014 with only a handful of members. However, we are not all about the numbers though, our aim is to continue improving quality to provide a better experience for all our members. Part of this growth was due to the adding of a brand new Cub Pack on a Tuesday night meeting Prague 10, thanks to Chris, Simon and Jo and the wider Cub teams for making this a great success. The rest of the growth was due to moving to capacity in all sections. We now have a large waiting list, which we see as a challenge to be solved as soon as possible. Our year has gone well with lots of fabulous activities being provided, we hope that we will add to this next year with more and more fun activities now we are able plan in advance again. You can see about the different things our members have been up to in the section reports. There are a few things that must get mention by me as Group Scout Leader, firstly our Group Camp in July last year, this was incredibly successful and saw 50 young people enjoy a week of activities in Southern Bohemia taking part in traditional Scouting and adventurous activities. On our first night at camp we had the traditional leader briefing after the kids had all gone to bed after a very busy day which ended with a scout campfire. As we sat around the tables in our event shelter, I commented on my feeling of pride, because there before me were 20 adults all in camp with the same aim to provide a great experience to the young people we had taken to camp. A great time was had! The second notable event happened following the terrible situation that has been occurring in Ukraine. Like most people, members of our group were shocked by the events that had been unfolding there and felt they needed to do something, as tens of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict started to leave their country. Initially many of our members like myself locked onto to some of the volunteer opportunities in Prague such as providing clothing, sleeping bags, medical supplies etc or by helping in various refugee centres. One of our members even took medical supplies to Ukraine. These activities were very worthwhile and helped significantly, but as a group we did not have a focus. It took our Explorers to stand up and decide on what we should do. They worked with the group to determine that we would try and just run activities to support Ukrainian young people arriving as refugees in Prague. We started by raising some money to help young people and our activities for them. We raised over 3500 euros in our Hike for Ukraine, this was quite Page|7
