1st Chew Stoke Scout Group would not be able to run without its strong group of amazing volunteers who give up their time to provide new opportunities to our members. We are always looking for more people to join our volunteer team, to help for as little or as much time as they can.
Beavers, Cubs and Scouts each have a separate Section Team (known as “the leaders”) that is given the responsibility of running their section and allowing the young people to make the most out of their Scouting adventure, while at the same time having an adventure themselves. Being a volunteer also offers the chance to build on personal skills, like teamwork, confidence and leadership.
Or if you’d rather work behind the scenes, our Group Leadership Team is there to support the group in its aim of providing Scouting activities, and there are sometimes roles available there.
We also have a Trustee Board ensuring the Group is run in line with Charity Commission and The Scout Association guidelines.
As well as the benefits of working with young people and helping them to enjoy their scouting adventure, there is the added perk that, as a volunteer with the section leadership team or with some roles in the Group Leadership Team, your young person gets a priority place in the group as spaces become available. We regret that we are unable to offer priority places to the children of occasional helpers or members of the Trustee Board.
If you’d like to volunteer, get in touch with us!
What Does Being A Section Leader Involve (Honestly)?
You would be joining a friendly Leadership Team who are experienced in running the section – the team (and the Group) are always grateful for new leaders, so you’d have lots of help and support to ease yourself in and learn the role.
Between everyone on the team, a Leadership group has a few responsibilities:
- plan the sessions – this is typically done one evening per term, often with a small group of leaders meeting somewhere social! You may have some ideas of what you want to do, or there are lots of resources to inspire you / be copied!
- run the sessions – this mostly involves helping the Beavers/Cubs/Scouts with activities, and helping to keep everyone safe and enjoying themselves. Hopefully over time you would feel comfortable to suggest activities and maybe run some yourself. For many of our leaders, the weekly sessions are a highlight of their week, full of fun and laughter.
- A leader is not required to be at every session, especially if you are helping out a lot on the organising/admin side, but we do need a meet a minimum number of adults at each meeting, so we do ask for a commitment to attend at least 50% of the weekly sessions.
- admin – there is not too much, and it can be shared across the team, but there is some that is important: risk assessments (to keep everyone safe); attendance register (to keep track of who is in our care); publishing the programme plan (to share what we are doing with the parents); updating badge records (to reward the young people for their achievements). These are all managed through a single, simple online system that you’d be trained on.
The bad news is that because we are an organisation that works with young people there are certain bureaucratic requirements to be met, as you might expect. There are some mandatory learning courses on topics like safety, safeguarding, GDPR etc – these are short online courses that would need to be completed within your first few weeks/months. There are a few other straightforward tasks, including obtaining a DBS certificate completed through the Scouts, which only takes 15 minutes or so to complete the application. All Leaders are also expected to hold First Aid certification – if you don’t already, there are regular free training sessions held locally throughout the year. It’s important to be able to commit to completing these tasks, as the Scout Association is rightly very serious about safety and so these things need to be done correctly. Would you want your child left with leaders who have not completed any safety training, or have adults who have not have a DBS check be allowed to stay overnight at camp? Fortunately none of these tasks are excessively onerous, and there is plenty of time to complete them without them being becoming a rush.
The team needs people with lots of different skills. They team members share the responsibilities between them, which means that everyone’s strengths and weaknesses can be accounted for. You may be comfortable talking to young children or enjoy leading a session; you may be good at organising, or at writing risk assessments; you may have a love of the outdoors or have other skills and ideas that you want to share; you may be good at nudging a team to ensure everything gets done. All these, and many more, are skills that can be shared around between a scouting Leadership Team.
If you want any more details or to discuss what is involved and how it might work for you, please get in touch!
Young Leaders/DofE
We have recently been lucky to have had several Duke of Edinburgh Award participants joining us as Young Leaders to meet the requirements for their volunteering section. We would be happy to welcome further participants in future who would like to get involved with helping at our Beavers or Cubs sections. Parents or DofE leaders can get in touch with Ian, our Group Lead Volunteer to discuss.