Last week we held a District Team meeting. It’s important that we do our Scouting openly and everyone gets a chance to understand what we do at these meetings. So here’s what we discussed…
1. Communications & Sharing
We discussed setting up a new ‘Round-up‘ email and what the best format would be for it. This has now gone out to all adults in the District and we hope you find it useful.
Emails which are specific to certain people – for example information about a District Cub Scout event – will still go out as before.
A Google Drive folder for the District Team has been set up so we can share documents – such as the adult training tracker, District Executive agendas etc – more easily.
2. Team Development
The District Team meeting, according to the Policy, Organisation and Rules of the Scout Association (POR) is for the Assistant District Commissioners for Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, the District Explorer Scout Commissioners, the Assistant District Commissioner for Activities, the Local Training Manager, the Deputy District Commissioners and the District Commissioner.
We checked whether we were carrying out the functions of the District Team as per POR and confirmed we were, however more could possibly be done regarding Scout Active Support.
It was agreed we needed to recruit more District Scouters or possibly additional Assistant District Commissioners.
We also have an external management training course arranged for the Team to brush up on a few skills which will hopefully improve how we support the Groups & Units.
3. Events
It was announced that as from September, Butch will be taking a more active role supporting the Assistant District Commissioners for Sections, to help them ensure agendas, minutes and information about events gets out in a timely manner.
We also discussed how we can ensure we get the right number and type of District events that Groups need, how we can share the load of organising these events more effectively, and how we can share the organisation with young people.
We looked at putting on a large scale event in 2018 which the whole District could look forward to as there was a lack of this in 2017 following the bumper year of 2016 which included Beaver and Cub anniversaries and the Area Camp visited by Bear Grylls.
4. Growth Plan
We completed the District Growth Planner and will look at what we need to do to achieve this plan. We will be repeating this process in each Group, and with the Explorer Scout Section, in the coming months.
Hope this is informative and gives you all an idea of the work we do.