Re: Do Brownies 'do' St Georges Day

On 4 Apr, 14:25, "Eddie Langdown" <the3l...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Eddie... they would still be uniform and still perceived to be hanging
around with strange old paedoes doing weird stuff. the badges are not
the problem.

scouting will still be 'gay' and kids will still hide it.
Increasingly, some of mine are willing to admit to it to friends but
they are the minority, (generally the rougher tougher ones will bring
along a mate).

sorry... i don't care... we are popular with our members. All our
sections are full. We are not full of geeky kids and special needs
types but have a very healthy mix of all sorts.

I am happy not to be doing something cool. I've seen what is an
attempt at cool. It;s run by youth services and it is patronising and
awful. (But your new climbing wall in bermondsey is awesome)

AH!
But our new out-side climbing wall ( which starts at 3rd floor and goes up a
further 4 floors ) and the multi-million pound youth centre it is attached
to is not run my the Yooof Sevice!http://www.salmoncentre.co.uk/gallery/album0.html
It is part of an unashamedly Christian - based charity that has lots of
street cred in these parts. Salmon Centre ( ex Cambridge University Mission)
has battled hard to be accepted by the local Yoof service, and now it is
tail wagging dog time.

I take what you say about 'if kids choose to belong to us' etc.
But I am still unhappy with the covert nature of wearing the uniform behind
closed doors, it is all an unhealthy secrecy. And I seriously do think that
if we had a simple badge free 'uniform' , and we are part of a more open,
mixed, organisation, that scouting would lose it's negative- weirdo image in
10 years or so.
I have to say Chris, much as I admire your group and your personal
enthusiasm, many of your attitudes to a lot of things will change once you
have more girls and they begin to re-shape your activities, or how you
approach your activities.
Eddie

On 4 Apr, 14:25, "Eddie Langdown" <the3l...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have to say Chris, much as I admire your group and your personal
enthusiasm, many of your attitudes to a lot of things will change once you
have more girls and they begin to re-shape your activities, or how you
approach your activities.
Eddie

probably. I've been working on getting girls to join for a couple of
years. We have 2 due in the beavers in september and a mum emailed me
today about her daughter joining cubs. I'm all in favour but am not
sure how much i will change/ allow it to change me.

There are many basics of my scouting that i've inherited and continued
due to their success and i would be doing a disservice to the scouts
if i allowed some of those to change too much.

I've adapted slightly to accept autistic boys as more and more have
joined and i'll adapt again but it is the format that i use that has
made us the biggest troop in the biggest group in the district. (kids
vote with their feet... that's why i bring in the numbers) And there
is a sense in my mind that if girls want to join the 5th, then it must
be because they want to do what the 5th do. I run the stuff that I
enjoy and luckily it seems to tally with what the scouts enjoy. I
imagine that that will continue. I've taken a troop that was dying on
its arse with a leader who had no rapprt with the scouts and a huge
dropout rate. (2 cubs packs of 24 each and a troop of 16 scouts in the
days when it was 10-16) to a troop of 43 and more due to join with an
explorer unit that is slowly growing and finding its feet.

So... i have a definite idea of what scouting is and how it works for
me and my troop. My scouts buy into that and i hope that they will
continue to.

Last night's programme:

Kick the ball around for 15 mins, we've got big grounds and they enjoy
football, seems churlish to stop them I always make sure there are a
few balls out there so they can make up teams and games as they wish.
Bulldog
Longball (kick ball, run up and down tennis court until hit with ball)
murderball
and excercise on the beaufort scale... with scissors, glue collage
type thing

They were brilliant, I had fun and it was v succesful. A fun night
(summer's here! woo hoo, we are outside)

if i don't play the rough games... i'll lose some of them. And I do
not want to lose them as much as I want to recruit girls. I will
slowly discover a fine balance I imagine... but i see no reason to
stop doing the stuff (including the rough tough stuff) if it means
losing existing members... it's one of our USPs


.

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