His Service at St Peters Church was a testimony of the love and respect that we all have for Lee. The church was full of family and scouting friends not only from our district but from far and wide in the County.
It was fantastic to see so many young people attend who Lee had clearly made a mark upon with his scouting. The highlight for the day for me was the very smartly presented Scouts from the 13th who came and paid there respects to Lee. They were a real credit to Lee and his group.
What we have to do now, is to look to take both the 13th and the district forward and to make sure that all that he wished for our young people is still very much delivered.
District Development Day
We have rearranged the district development day to be held on Saturday 2nd February 2013 starting at 10am to finish prompt at 4pm at the New Newlands Primary School in Millbrook.
Those of you that were originally invited are of course welcome to come and I will be forwarding to you all a reminder directly after Christmas.
Wilverley
Good News the charges for our own groups to use Wilverley have been greatly reduced. It is now recognised that Wilverley is your camp site and we want you to make good use of it. These are the charges that come into effect on the 1st January 2013.
25th Sea Scout Group
I can report that the 25th Sea Scout Group may be moving to a better home. They have been approached by a developer who wants to purchase their site and move them a few yards up the road and build for them a far better scout HQ and boat store. The negotiations are very much on going but it looks like the 25th have exciting times ahead.
What have I been up to this month?
I have completed my first response training which was delivered by Sarah Milstead. A huge thank you for her patience with me and for her very professionally delivered training.
I also went to the Scout Walkabout presentation which was won by the 1st Scout Troop at Fort Purbrook. This is a great place for a late night exercise and clearly everyone who joined the event had a great time. Well done to all the scouts and the Leaders and Stuart for the event.
I then went to the County Conference where the main topics were the growth of scouting and the vision of scouting. Thank you to those that came along. Directly afterwards I went to Gilwell for a DC open day. This was a great opportunity to get information from headquarters and to go to various workshops on a range of different topics. The main ones I attended were again about growth and how we welcome adults into scouting and how we retain them. I also attended a workshop on safeguarding which highlight even more our responsibilities to our young people.
The following weekend I joined up at the County Network Kudo competition which was very well attended by a large number of Network and Explorer Units. Southampton City had two Explorer units enter the competition and they had a great time despite the terrible rain at 3am on the Sunday morning. A very big well done, to Kieran and Jason and Naomi for organising the event which was praised by everyone throughout the County.
I then went the following day to Exbury Gardens to join up with Geoff and Lin and the other leaders and youngsters who were helping at the ghost train. It was clear yet again that this was an event which they all thoroughly enjoyed. It is always wonderful to see scouting to be out in the community having fun. I awarded a thank you badge to Nigel who is the Manager of Exbury as a mark of our appreciation to him for years of support and encouragement.
Last night I went to the District Swimming Gala at the Quays this was a fun event for the district. Well done to all that competed and to the 22nd who won the group trophy. A very big thank you to Doreen and Carol and Graham for organising this splendid competition.
Your GSLs have a paper copy of the new 2013 district diary which is also on the district website. Please remember that you can forward all your good news stories as they happen throughout the month and then Tony will put them all together for a left hand shake publication at the end of the month. So please remember to get all your adverts and good news stories to Tony by the 25th of every month. We always need to shout loud about what we are doing.
Please don’t forget if you need to speak to me with anything your concerned about just give me a call and I am sure I can help you.
Mob Tel 07770364711 or colin.floyd@ntlworld.com
Yours in Scouting
Colin Floyd, District Commissioner