1st Stotfold Ridgway Scout Troop has had
another very active and enjoyable year and have been on many camps,
run many activities and achieved many badges. We have done more
activities than we can fit in this report, but nearly all activities
we run have reports and photos on our website at www.stotfoldscouts.org.uk/ridgway. Also this AGM report can be
found on our website with links to all the relevant areas.
It is difficult to write a report year after year and
not risk being repetitive, but we have a tried and true formula
within the Troop that maintains a balance of "traditional" and "have
a go at something different" with each term’s program. We have
managed to run many new activities and events in the past year and
the consistency of numbers within the Troop reflects the relevance
of Scouts and the benefits to be gained from involvement.
Camps
Since the last AGM we have been on 13 camps. These have included
District camps such as the District Group Camp in July, District Survival Camp in February, District Hikes and
the District Challenge
Activity Camp in March.
On the Jubilee weekend in June we attended Experience 2002 at
Oaks Campsite in Leicester. This was a great camp with lots of
activities on offer as well running our own street party.
The Tuesday Troop organised and ran their own camp in May last year at Phasels wood
campsite and was a great success. We also had 2 patrol camps held at
the Scout hut in June which were organised by patrols in the Monday
Troop.
For our summer camp last year we attended Cumbaree 2002 in the Lake District. This was an enjoyable week taking part in a
wide range of activities and visits. The weather turned to the more
traditional rain by the end of the week, but this did not spoil the
fun.
In the winter we attended the annual Gilwell Winter Camp 2003
which was very cold but offered hundreds of activities for the 1000
Scouts that attended.
We also held a camp at the Scout Hut in November where we ran a ‘Children
in Need’ Games Night on the Friday as well as the District Soap box derby on the
Sunday.
We held both our August camp and November camp at Boyd
field campsite and Scouts were able to achieve their outdoor
challenge and Angler badges.
Activities
We have run some large weekend events for our Scouts
to take part in. We ran Inter@ctive 2002 in September last year. This was an activity
day at the Scout Hut and Guide Building that was organised and run
by 5 Scouts and 5 Guides. The day was a great success with over 70
Stotfold Scouts and Guides attending and taking part in activities
like archery, shooting, karting, bouncy castles, backwoods cooking
and much more.
In October we ran a day at the Scout Hut as part of CSV Make a Difference Day.
Scouts did work in the Scout Hut as well as work on the woodland
near the Scout Hut. The Scouts managed to clear and redecorated an
area of the Scout Hut to make it into a computer suite.
We ran a Jail
break in March, in aid of Comic Relief Red Nose Day. This event
consisted of the Scouts being blindfolded and taken to an unknown
location. From here the Scouts had to work out where they were and
get as far away from that location as they could in the 3 hours. The
Scouts also had to find and photograph themselves at several
different landmarks which included a church, post box, bridge and
telephone box. The event was great fun and raised over £550 for
Comic Relief.
In April we ran a Music Activity weekend at the Stotfold Scout HQ. This event
enabled Scouts to take part in various music activities and they
were able to form bands and record their own songs and music video.
The Sunday enabled Scouts to plan and record their own radio shows
which were broadcast together with all the weekend recordings on our internet radio station in the
evening. All the work that the Scouts produced can be found on our
website.
Badges
With the introduction of the new award system in June
we can now work towards the challenges as part of the normal
programme. Over the past year our Scouts have gained their outdoor
challenge, creative
challenge, fitness
challenge and expedition challenge as well as gaining
proficiency badges like IT, Musician, swimming and Angler. We have
also awarded all of the participation badges and nights away badges.
Some of our Scouts have totalled over 50 nights away. For the rest
of this year we will be working towards the community challenge and
Global challenge as part of our programme activities.
Evening activities
On our normal troop nights we have run many themed
activities like Ready
Steady Cook, Generation Game, Scrap
Heap Challenge, iron man challenge and have run evenings at the Rocknasium complex in
Kempston, Activity World in Hatfield, MUGA pitch, mountain biking, Karting at Super karts,
golf at Willian Way, swimming at Letchworth Leisure Centre and wide
games.
Website (www.stotfoldscouts.org.uk/ridgway)
We have added more services to our website over the
past year. We meet every month for an hour in our website chat room
and we hold a monthly prize draw
competition. We publish reports on most events on our website
and some of the Scouts have started to produce a bi monthly
newsletter (Scout Shout) which
they also publish on the internet. We tried out some new features at
our music activity weekend and had a live webcam broadcasting
photos of the event to our website. And we broadcast a 2¼ hour radio
show via our internet radio station.
We will be launching a new service named ‘Fusion’
in June which will enable Scouts and parents to receive alerts and
letters via SMS text messages, email, WAP and the internet.
Summary and objectives for 2003/2004
The Scout troop has been run by myself (Charles Kilby)
as Scout Leader and Nick Peace as Assistant Scout Leader. We have
been grateful of the help from other leaders such as Andrew Brember,
Steve Davies and Peter Cheney and are thankful for help from
parents. I would also like to thank Maureen and Keith Brooks for
their continued support and help.
We hope to continue with the active programme that we
currently run and have some ideas and plans for new events in the
next year. We will be taking part in the Sherwood 2003 summer camp in August and we will be running the Group communications weekend in October where we will use a
whole host of communication technologies to talk to Scouts from all
over the world. This is run as part of JOTI (Jamboree on the
Internet) and JOTA (Jamboree on the Air).
As I have done in
previous years, here is a simple list of the activities we have
offered our Scouts in the past 12 months. These are roughly in order
of taking part in them. Activity world,
cycling, backwoods cooking, mountain boarding, fencing, climbing,
abseiling, disco, archery, assault course, amateur radio, computer
games, theme park, canoeing, rafting, bowling, carnival, shooting,
water slide, slippery pole, mini pioneering, golf, backwoods
cooking, water bomb fight, cricket, rounders, skate boarding, space
hoppers, canoe rafts, kayaking, orienteering, ariel runway, boson
chair, prusaking, monkey bridge, crate climbing, bungee run,
football, hockey, baseball, skittles, water power rockets, kite
flying, bouncy castle, pyramid games, fling net pistol, shooting,
earth ball, blind football, volley ball, mountain biking, driving
skills, rodeo, fencing, pioneering, ballista, boats, giant chess,
giant draughts, parachute, paint ball targets, engraving glasses,
masks, face painting, wood turning, biscuit decorating, branding,
circus skills (acrobatics), gold panning, steel drums, pancake
making, build computers, ham radio, remote controlled cars,
swimming, golf, hiking, hockey, basketball, karting, rounders,
football, BBQ, table tennis, snooker, bowls, scalextric, table
football, computer games, darts, tug of war, stocks, twister, feed
the clown, giant snakes and ladders, treasure hunt, karaoke,
graffiti board, ready steady cook, iron man challenge, glass
painting, fymo models, films, fishing, quasar, surf simulator, gyro,
push ball, clay pigeon shooting, computers, simulator, quad bikes,
radio hike, pedal karts, shelter building, rabbit skinning, scrap
heap challenge, first aid, wide games, dancing, radio show
production, lyric writing, origami and more… |
