The following is the text of my speech to District AGMs this year which some people have suggested may be worth sharing with members who did not manage to attend the meetings.
Last November four of us from the County attended the National Conference of the Scout Association in Leicestershire and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to share some of the thoughts and ideas that occurred to us during that weekend.
The main purpose of the conference was to put some flesh on the bones of the Association’s “Vision 2018” which was adopted a couple of years ago. The details of the Vision can be found on the national website and they are worth having a look at as although they are very high level they will have a direct impact on the Scouting that we experience in Groups and Districts.
The Vision has nine different strands under the three headings of what Scouting will do, what it will be and what its members will feel. The first two areas cover the sort of issues you would expect such as community impact, growth, the role of young people, diversity, active citizenship and social change. However, the area I wanted to talk about today was the third one of how members want to feel about their Scouting in five years’ time.
The three aspirations are that “members of Scouting in 2018 will feel:
- Empowered
- Valued and
- Proud
But what does that mean?
So, does that mean that our members, including our young members, feel disempowered at present? Are they not valued for what they do in Scouting? Don’t they feel proud to belong to the biggest and best youth movement in the world? Apparently not – or at least they believe they ought to feel better about these things in five years’ time.
Since there are around half a million Scouts in the UK and about a fifth of them are adults, it is inevitable that we sometimes feel that decisions are taken and things are done in our name when we seem to have had very little to do with them and yet it is largely you in the Colonies, Packs, Troops and Units who are expected to implement these changes. Whether it is a new badge or a change to the programme or changes to activity or safety rules it often feels that these changes are made by “them” with very little input from “us”. And to an extent that is the price we pay for belonging to a large organisation. But there are means at our disposal that we can use to make our views known to influence the decisions that are taken in our name.
Today, and certainly in five years’ time, we have and will have far more opportunities to influence the changes that will be made. When I was a young leader if I wanted to voice my opinion about something at national level I would have to write a letter to Scouting magazine and that was probably the last that we ever seen of my idea. Today we can use email and social media to engage in daily, if not hourly, dialogue with other leaders and decision makers throughout the country. The Association has never undertaken so many surveys to seek a cross-section of views from its members, including the young people themselves. It is our job to hold our senior decision makers to account, to ensure that the decisions that are taken reflect or at least take proper account of the views of the membership that are now being expressed and we can use these and more conventional means to do so.
We will also be empowered if we are able to exercise more discretion, so that we are not restricted by rules imposed by others. We should be able to adapt the Scout programme to a certain extent to meet the needs of our young people and the localities that we serve. I believe we are able to do this by focussing more clearly on the fundamental values of Scouting. There is nothing wrong in my view with experimenting with new programmes and activities for our young people if we can demonstrate that our actions are based on the Purpose, Values and Method of Scouting as summarised in our Promise and Law. We do not have to be restricted by local rules and policies so long as we can honestly say that we remain true to the Fundamentals of our Movement. So, the opportunities for empowerment of leaders and young people are there – we just need to seize them.
How do we value our members more? Of course we should thank leaders and helpers more. They are all volunteers after all. We should use the national awards and County Award scheme to thank adults who give good and valuable service to the Movement. Anyone can nominate someone else for an award, so if you think someone has been overlooked please say so and speak to your DC or a member of the County Team and we will see if an award can be applied for. But above all, if we value our members, we should respect them. We may not always share their views or attitudes. We may not understand their issues or concerns but so long as they are willing to serve Scouting we should value them by giving them the same respect as we would wish to be given by others. If we valued one another by giving them the respect that we promised to give when we first joined you would have an even happier, even friendlier and even more successful District than it is now (and your DC and I would have a good deal fewer problems to deal with).
And how will we increase our Pride in being a Scout in five years time? We can do so much more to tell the general public about what we do. So often I go to events where I see and hear Scouts doing great things that the public would be really interested in but no-one thought to invite the local paper or put out a press release.
The advice from the experts is that we should write press releases before events happen as part of our planning and just fill in the details and send them off straight away immediately after even for routine things like annual camps or Christmas shows. You might think these things are quite normal and not particularly noteworthy but to the public they are reminders of lively and active Scouting in their community. The more positive stories and images we can put out the more pride we will feel in what we do.
But pride is also an internal thing. We can choose to take pride in what we do. We can take pride in the programmes we put together, taking care to ensure that they are interesting and challenging yet safe for our young people. We can be proud of our Scout buildings, keeping them well maintained, tidy and attractive so they are appealing to new members and the wider community. And we can be proud of our own appearance and our uniforms in particular. And by taking that pride it will rub off on others who will see the standard you have set and seek either to imitate or exceed it. This is how we set standards for our teams and our young people.
So when you next see a reference to Vision 2018 don’t dismiss it as just a lot of words that don’t have anything to do with you. Far from it – it is fundamentally about what you do week by week in your Group and District and what you will be doing – and feeling- in five years’ time.
You should all seek to be empowered in whatever you do. You are all valued by your fellow leaders and managers but most of all by your young people and you should feel immensely proud of the service that you give to the community through Scouting. Thank you very much indeed and I look forward to seeing and hearing more of your achievements over the coming weeks and months.
Thank you.