User:Nicmacdonald/sandbox

Ballarat District Scouts

The Scouting Movement was instigated by Robert Baden-Powell in the early 1900s, with the first Scout Camp held on Brownsea Island in 1908.

In the century since, many people have been a Scout, and the numbers are rising in the Ballarat Scouting District.

As at 2019, the Ballarat District included a number of groups within the boundaries of Ballarat itself, plus Groups in Beaufort, Maryborough, and Avoca. Defunct Groups were in Daylesford...

3rd Ballarat is in Soldiers Hill, 5th Ballarat is in Golden Point, 1st Mt Clear, Alfredton, Wendouree, Sebastopol (formerly 7th Ballarat), Creswick, Beaufort, Maryborough and Avoca...

'''What is ‘District’? '''

The mysterious ‘District’ is a small group of adult volunteers, some in uniform and some not, who freely give their time to support Ballarat District Scout Groups.

What does this ‘support’ look like?

The District Executive Committee, the District Personnel Committee, District Section Leaders, and the District Commissioner all talk a lot. Their roles do not include running activities and meeting nights every week with Youth, but they certainly meet every week, and sometimes every day, to ensure that the governance of Groups is compliant and up-to-date. For the hundreds of uniformed members in Ballarat District Scouting, these individuals run themselves hard to ensure administrative matters are attended to, oversight of policies and procedures and protocols at Group level, and report writing and dealing with problems that always arise. Fortunately, the District Leaders also run activities on a weekly basis for their respective Sections in their own Groups.

Who are these people?

The uniformed members of the District Team are Ian Lock, Andrew Hubbard, Shell and Brad Pryor, Adrian Newman, Verena Doyle, and Neil Hunt. The non-uniformed members of the District team are Robyn Ashmore and Nick Macdonald.

What can you do to help?

Glad you asked! At District level in this great Scouting Movement, competent, experienced and professional people are needed right now to help us interview leaders (DPC), attend working bees at Pax Hill (under supervision), write grant applications for many different little and large things, and to become trained and uniformed leaders in most sections. The people who come on board do not need to have ever been Scouts, they need not be interested in becoming a uniformed member, but they must be interested in being part of a team which is for Youth development. Planning for succession is critical, and training is always required. This situation is common to many, if not all, Scout Groups.