Chief Commissioner's blog| Scouting for all: broadening our partnerships

Ensuring that we genuinely offer Scouting for all was the dominant feature of Wayne’s week along with undertaking the ‘business’ of Scouting.

Getting our views across

We are delighted that the Pears Foundation has committed £200,000 to fund a development project in Avon with us. We were pleased to join them in a meeting with the CEOs of Girlguiding and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme to explore areas of common interest, particularly our shared agenda of promoting non-formal education.

It’s an area, in its widest sense, which is increasingly in the headlines as we successfully make the point of its importance, the latest being a report from APPG on social mobility.  You can read our responses here.

Developing partnerships

I also met with the CEO of I CAN, the leading charity for children and young adults with communication difficulties, and the Chair of Scope, a leading charity for those with additional needs. We discussed how we can give our leaders the confidence to make sure Scouting welcomes all and ensure that our programmes help young people understand such issues.

Scouting in the Muslim community

On Saturday, Steve Peck and I spent the day with the Executive Committee of the Muslim Scout Fellowship, which develops and supports Muslims in UK Scouting and improves our presence in local communities. They have supported the opening of 60 Groups to date and we discussed what more we can collectively do to achieve our presence in all Muslim communities.

Not forgetting the housekeeping

The ‘business’ of Scouting this week included our regular meeting of the Chairman’s Co-ordinating Committee where our discussions covered the strategic plan and risk management.  Friday morning was taken up with over four hours of reviewing the budgets, line by line!

18/02/14

 

Comments

By Larry Wilson on 23/02/2014 13:17 It is particularly encouraging that a partnership with Scope is being developed. At University Academy scout troop in Liverpool we have introduced scouting to a community of young people who had, in the main not even heard of scouting. Engaging groups, communities and sections of young people that miss out on the opportunities scouting bring is what the movement was set up for in the first place. Disability continues to be a taboo area and we really do embrace the ethos of scouting when we not only welcome young people with disability but develop groups that donâ??t even see these differences, just beavers, cubs or scouts!