issue 1 february 2014 - durham scouts · issue 01 february 2014 4 our first ‘getting together’...
TRANSCRIPT
Issue 1 February
2014
Contacts and Information: Email: [email protected] Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/130015310502330/
Welcome to the first of our Jamboree Unit newsletters and a happy New Year to you all.
In our first “Unit 50 Update”, we’ll share with you some more details on how we’re all going to communicate over the coming months (just 18 months to go!) and let you know more details of our first residential in March.
Before that, let’s take a look at our Jamboree Unit.
“Unit 50” comes from our Unit number, assigned by the UK Contingent Management Team. When we all meet in March we’re going to come up with a snappier name than “Durham and Humberside Unit” (we’ve had a few suggestions), but for now, Unit 50 will do.
As you all know, Unit 50 is a joint Durham / Humberside Unit, but thanks to some cool software on the Internet, we can actually see where we all come from…
Durham Unit Members Home Locations
Humberside Unit Members Home Locations
As you can see, we’re spread right across the North East Scout Region, but that’s not going to stop us from being the best prepared and friendliest Unit at the Jamboree.
Although we have an all-male Leadership team, as far as youth members are concerned we have 10 female Unit members and 18 male Unit members, which nicely reflects the make-up of UK Scouting.
We also have quite a spread in ages and when we go to Japan (did we mention that there are only 18 months to go?) our youth membership age ranges will cover the full Explorer Scout age range of 14 – 17 (see below).
Age at Time of Jamboree
3
11
13
9
14 yrs 15 yrs 16 yrs 17 yrs
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Over the coming months we’ll have plenty of chances to get to know one another, and you’ll find a full list of our Unit membership below.
Apologies now if we’ve got anyone’s name wrong, but some of your handwriting is appalling! We will however be checking all your data at the weekend at Moor House in March, so we’ll be able to sort all that out.
Unit 50 Membership
Abigail BREEDEN
Andrew LODDO
Andrew ELDER
Anna BARRASS
Ben GLOVER
Ben TINDALL
Benjamin NELLIS
Cara TAYLOR
Caroline KNOX
Christopher TURNBULL
Connor GREENFIELD
Connor ANDERSON
David STOKES (Unit Leader)
Dylan AUSTIN
Dylan RIDD
Emily BROWN
Ewan ALLEN-COTTINGHAM
George MELLONBY
Gerald KILLEN
Harry WALLIS
Harvey MARRIT
Jack SIMMS
Jacob CROSBEE
James CRAIG
James HERON (Assistant Unit Leader)
Jessica HARBOTTLE
Jessica WILLIAMS
Jonathan HANN
Jude SHILCOCK
Lewis SIMPSON (Assistant Unit Leader)
Lewis WHITELY
Louise BRYSON
Luke WATSON
Mark IRELAND
Matthew HAWKES
Matthew JONES
Samuel BURROW
Timothy WAKELY (Deputy Unit Leader)
William HUGHES
Yeva Esther CREEGAN
Planning a successful and enjoyable Jamboree experience relies heavily on good communications, and that’s important for a Unit which is spread across a region like we are.
Although you might get the occasional letter, we’re going to rely heavily on electronic communications for organising activities and events.
From now on, “I don’t read my e-mails” will have to stop being a reason for not picking up important information. It’s therefore very important that we have up-to-date, working e-mails addresses for every Unit member and parents/carers etc, and that you check your e-mails very regularly.
Please let us know straight away if you change e-mail address (or any other contact or personal information) or want to add a separate e-mail address for a Unit Member or parent.
We’ll be posting information on-line using the Durham and Humberside websites (which everyone should have access to) and using Facebook. We’ll also make sure that an e-mail is sent out whenever we need to communicate with you, no matter what other media we use.
Let’s start by giving you some important e-mail address:
Unit E-mail Address
Use this one if your e-mail is about any general Jamboree Unit question.
Durham E-mail Address
E-mail David if your e-mail is something to do with just Durham Scout County arrangements (usually local travel arrangements and payments).
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Humberside E-mail Address
E-mail Tim if your e-mail is something to do with just Humberside Scout County arrangements (usually local travel arrangements and payments).
You’ll also find information on the Durham and Humberside Scout County websites.
Durham Website
http://www.durhamscouts.org.uk/events/2015-world-scout-jamboree/
Humberside Website
http://www.humbersidescouts.org.uk/
We’ll be using Facebook in two ways, with both a Facebook group and page
Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/130015310502330/
The Facebook Group is a secret group and membership is by invitation only. This is just for
Unit members (including leaders and youth members) and for parents / carers.
Everyone for whom we have an e-mail address should have received an invitation to join the Group – let us know if you haven’t received your invitation.
We’ll be using this to make copies of forms, letters etc. available to those of you who lose the copies we’ll e-mail out
This is also where we’ll share photos, videos and stories that we possibly don’t want to share with the rest of the world!
Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/DurhamHumberside-2015-Jamboree-Unit/168441246686993
This will be our public face on Facebook. Anyone can like/see this page and we’ll be uploading photos, stories and updates there, including while we are at the Jamboree (if you’ve forgotten, there’s just 18 months to go!)
This is the address you should share with other family members, supporters and other interested parties.
You (and your family and friends) can also follow us on Twitter using
@DH2015JamboUnit
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Our first ‘getting together’ is next month, over the weekend of 7th – 9th March 2014 and will be at Durham Scout County’s Moor House Activity Centre. For those who haven’t been to Moor House before, you can find out more at http://moor-house.org.uk/
It’s an indoor residential weekend (no camping) and we’ll have all of our Unit members (young people and Leaders) there, supported by members of Durham Scout County, including the County Scout Network.
While later activities will be aimed at helping us prepare and train for camping and activities at the Jamboree, the aim of this first weekend is to allow everyone to get to know one another and to help us plan for home hospitality and Mimasu Tokyo.
You’ll be sleeping in small bunk rooms, sharing with members from your opposite Scout County and during the weekend we’ll be mixing you up for different activities to allow you the opportunity to meet everyone.
We’re currently finalising the programme for the weekend, but we’re currently looking at:
A review of Unit Communications,
Designing a Unit Badge or badges,
Developing a Unit Code of Conduct,
Developing Patrol Leader / Assistant Patrol Leader role description,
Team building exercises, including using some of the fabulous adventurous activities at Moor House,
Tokyo slide show,
Home Hospitality and Scouting in Japan,
Improving Presentation skills, public speaking and impromptu speeches,
Fundraising swap shop,
Gift ideas,
Japanese culture,
Jamboree kit list,
Personal health and hygiene,
Update on other pre-Jamboree dates and activities.
Taking Unit photographs (we want to remember how young you all looked when we started!).
The Humberside members of the Unit will be travelling up to Moor House in two minibuses and the Durham Unit members will meet at Moor House.
The plan is for everyone to be there, ready to start having a great weekend by 8.30pm on the Friday.
We’ll be sending you more details in the next few weeks, including where to be and when and what to bring with you.
Other dates to put in your diaries are as below.
It is important that you attend ALL of these events – part of the commitment to taking part in the Jamboree is turning up to the training and team building events. If there are exceptional circumstances (Illness, other emergencies etc.) we’ll understand, but we’ve planned these dates to miss the most likely family holiday periods and most exam times.
A World Scout Jamboree isn’t just something that you can turn up to unprepared, so please make sure that you are able to attend all of the following dates.
Note that we’ll discuss and agree the details of these activities at the March camp at Moor House
Theme Park Visit: 8th June 2014
The purposes of this day out is to help continue our team building and to allow us to practice
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organising, moving and taking part in activities as Patrols – and it will be fun!
We’re looking for somewhere halfway between Durham and Humberside, so bring some ideas of where you’d like to go along to the camp in March.
Sponsored Adventurous Activity: 19th July 2013
This is so that we can have some fun taking part in an exciting and adventurous activity, but also help you to raise some funds by getting some sponsorship.
Have a think about what you’d like to do – we have a good number of adventurous activity permits holders inside and outside the Leadership team, so most things are possible.
We’ll finalise our ideas at the March camp to give you a good couple of months to raise some sponsorship.
Training Camp: 26th – 28th September 2014
This will be an outdoor camp at Raywell Park (Humberside) and it will be our first opportunity to camp together.
Think about where you can get your hands on some light weight tents, because we’ll be practising for Japan (which is only eighteen months away!)
London Day Out: 18th April 2015
This will be a long day as we’ll be on the early trains to London and coming back late – giving us a chance to practice the early starts that will be a big feature of Jamboree.
It will also be a chance to practice our train embarkation and disembarkation skills, as well as seeing how well we travel around a big city in Patrols, using the London ‘Tube’ network.
At our March residential we’ll decide what we want to do in London, so have a think about whether you’d just like to do some sightseeing or some sort of Patrol based competition?
There will also be two other camps (late April 2015 and early July 2015) which will be our final training camps as a complete Unit. We’ll confirm the dates for those just as soon as we know when we’ll receive our Jamboree equipment from the Contingent Management team.
We’ll also be organising some Durham or Humberside specific team building and fundraising activities so keep your eyes open for more dates.
Three of our Unit members have volunteered to become a Young Spokesperson, and be able to confidently tell some fantastic stories about Jamboree.
Unit members James Craig, George Mellonby and Ben Glover will be attending a special course at Linnet Clough Scout Centre near Manchester on 12/13th July 2014, supported by our Unit Communications Champion Lewis Simpson.
The course will teach our Unit members how to identify what makes a good story, how to tell stories in print, online or social media, how to speak to journalists and how to speak to camera.
This will be a great opportunity for James, George and Ben, but you too can become a Young Spokesperson for the Unit and help spread the Jamboree story.
If you’d also like to become a Young Spokesperson for the Unit (which will also help you elsewhere in Scouting and in life in general) let us know and we’ll arrange for Lewis, Craig, George and Ben to share their new tips and tricks with you.
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Accommodation for the UK Contingent in Tokyo has been booked – but it’s currently a closely guarded secret.
At the moment “details are top secret” (which means that the final details of our time in Tokyo are being sorted out by the Contingent Management Team) but it promises to be a fantastic couple of days.
When we meet in March we’ll be looking at what there is to do in Tokyo. Unit Leader David will be sharing some stories from last year’s trip to Tokyo and we’ll be deciding where we want to go and what we want to do.
Whilst in Tokyo it’s possible that some of our more responsible and confident young people will be able to travel around the city in small groups - and not necessarily with a Leader or other direct adult supervision.
We’ll be planning for this on our days out and on our practice trip to London, so that by the time we get to Tokyo we’ll know what to expect.
How’s your fundraising going?
We know that some of you have raised almost the full cost of the Jamboree by your fundraising efforts - well done! It can be daunting, but this proves that it can be done with some good ideas and a little hard work.
We’ll be organising Unit based fund raising activities over the next 15 months, but please do share your best ideas with the rest of the Unit, using the Facebook Group.
If you’d like to get in touch with fellow Unit members who are local to you, just ask and if you don’t already know each other we’ll put you in touch.
We’re already looking at the possibility to receive funding support from other charities and trusts, and we’ll be applying for support from some Japanese companies based in the North East.
Other ideas for Unit based fund-raising include:
Bag packs
Beer festival
Jamboree Ball
If you haven’t already approached your Groups, Units or Districts, don’t forget to ask them if they can provide financial support or to help you with your fundraising efforts.
If you’re struggling to get support from your local Groups, Units or Districts please do let us know and we’ll see if we can have a quiet word with them.
That’s all for our first issue of ‘Unit 50 Update’ and we look forward to seeing you all at Moor House in March!