Group Scout Leaders Report

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

an achievement, this was mainly the work of Atreyu one of our Explorers, their work on this activity made it a great success. After this we ran regular activities with games in the park and Easter crafts. We hope to continue this work and develop it as the need arises. Our work on supporting Ukrainian young people did not stop though with providing activities, we have, where we can, accepted some refugee young people into our sections. I am so proud of our section leaders who have taken this step, with language challenges and being already full not seeming to be an issue. We have been also fortunate to accept Ukrainian young people who were previously Scouts in Ukraine in our group. This year post COVID our Thursday Beavers and Cubs moved home to SOKOL Kampa, and our new pack found a home at SOKOL Vrsovice these moves although expensive financially for the group provides certainty of location for the next year or so. We have a plan to cover these costs with grants so the impact on the group should be reduced and the grants will also help us with our aim to reduce the overall cost of Scouting to our members. I would like to thank the work of Petra on making the moves a success and to Brook and Marcel on their work on applying for grants.

Nearly there…. but I can’t forget to thanks my section leaders of Chisato, Chris, Simon and Jo, Manon and Alastair and to our Group Executive committee led by Eleanor. They have spent hundreds of hours this year supporting young people. Without them and their fantastic teams we could not be as successful as we are. Our leaders and volunteers are our greatest resource and we thank each and every one of them for what they do.

I can’t ignore another group achievement this year of having three our members selected to attend next year’s world Scout Jamboree in South Korea as young people, congratulations to Alex, Isabella and Sophie, P a g e | 8

three of our Explorer Scouts. Their journey to South Korea includes significant fundraising, which will mean that in the new Scouting year we will try and help raise some of the money to get them there. Our stated vision is to provide scouting to as many English speaking international young people as possible, we will continue this work after the summer by opening a second Troop to reduce the waiting list and maybe soon……Squirrels.

Simon ‘Mang’ Burgess Group Scout Leader gsl@praguescouts.cz