From the Chief Commissioner
Hi everyone, hope you are having a great month!
The Australian Jamboree is now only 2 months away so can I highlight “Future Scout Day” at the Jamboree – scheduled for Saturday 11 January 2025. This day is dedicated to our Cub Scouts and Joey Scouts who wish to visit the Jamboree and take part in the many on-site activities. It is a great opportunity particularly for Cub Scouts to get a real feel of the “Scout Section” and lets them see the size and enormity of a Jamboree.
I encourage you to work with your group and mark 11 January 2025 in your diary to head to Maryborough for what will be a wonderful day out for Joey Scouts and Cub Scouts.
The link to the Visitor Registration site is here.
During October we hosted the 2nd and final Jamboree Contingent Leaders meeting in Maryborough, so now it is all systems go for AJ2025.
I am pleased to advise that I have approved the wearing of the AJ2025 Jamboree Badge as an event badge on the Scout Uniform in Queensland. This badge can be worn from 1 December 2024 through to end of February 2025. It should be worn on the top right-hand side of the uniform.
Over the last month I have reinforced to our members the importance of the Scout Promise and Scout Law. It should be the basis on how we live our lives each and every day.
Importantly it is a “promise” made by us to our ourselves!
“I promise to my best” – nobody else’s best just my own. I encourage you to chat with your young person about their promise. Are they living up to it every day?
We are continuing our budgeting process for 2025/2026 year. This means we are reviewing our Fees – both Joining Fee and the Renewal Fee and all other hire fees, campsite fees.
I shall keep you informed as our Branch Executive completes this review over the coming weeks and we hope to be able to advise our 2025/26 fees in late November.
Over October I communicated the following with our Leaders across the Branch:-
- Our independent reference checking for Adult Members is now ready to be launched which will reduce the administration workload for some of our leaders.
- The importance of the presentation of Badges to youth members at the time of completion of the SIA/Milestone. I impressed upon them the impact this can have on a youth member and asked all leaders to ensure they hold a supply of badges – based on the activities being undertaken, so that presentation and recognition to our youth is completed in a timely manner. I also highlighted the chance to involve and engage parents/carers, families at the presentation – at the opening or closing ceremony on a meeting night. The other opportunity this presents is other youth members seeing this recognition may then be encouraged to progress their own journey pathway.
- We launched our online Branch Calendar for 2025. This has been revised based on feedback and will be accessible to all members and not require any specific account or login
- We celebrated “Children’s Week” during October with a theme of Children have the right to a clean and safe environment. In Scouting we support this theme through our Child Safe Policies and Standards, which are all focused on creating and ensuring a safe environment for children. We all work hard through our program and activities to create these environments, to ensure great experiences for our youth members.
- I wanted to again highlight our +2 target for growth across our Groups. The chance we have to influence a young person’s life is significant and our program delivers real opportunities for their growth and development. We set a goal of +2 for each group over the year. I can report that currently (since April 2024):
- 48% of groups have grown by at least 2 youth members (94 Groups)
- 14% of groups are stable (28 Groups)
- 33% of groups have lost members (68 Groups)
- 5% of groups have no members (15 Groups)
- Brisbane First Chinese Scout Group celebrated 20 years with a dinner and a great many attendees from the original and first meeting of the group back in 2004. The group commenced with significant support from the Queensland Police Service and their representatives certainly enjoyed renewing past friendships. BRAVO Brisbane First Chinese!
I received a lovely email recently following the resignation of a youth member (names have been removed).
“Our son is leaving scouts as we’re moving back overseas. He has really enjoyed his time with the Moggill Group, and I can’t put in words our appreciation to the team at Moggill for the care and effort made to make him and ourselves feel welcome and included from day one. He will be continuing his Scouts journey. Thank you all so much”.
I hope this reinforces the opportunities to influence and gives all our Leaders a sense of pride and achievement. Well done Moggill Scout Group!
Have a great month and good Scouting!