The Scouters are the adults that volunteer to run the Group on an ongoing basis. They all have other lives but give their time and expertise to ensuring that the scouts have a great experience at scouts. Not only must a program be produced and run every Thursday evening but weekend activities must be planned, communicated and run and the inevitable administration must be taken care of. It is kind of like having a large family….
Since scouting started in 1908 finding adults who had the time and inclination to run scouts has been a difficulty that all Groups have had to wrestle with. Many Groups have ceased to exist due to the lack of adult involvement. At 1st Claremont we try to ensure that work is evenly spread between the available adults so that there is not too much demand on any one person and the Group is not dependent on one person. In this way we try to retain our scouters for a longer period than might otherwise be the case if they were overloaded.
Scouts South Africa provides training for scouters and we try to ensure that our scouters attend such training so as to be able to provide our scouts with a great experience and to keep ourselves up to date with the every changing scouting world.
Being a scouter is an immensely rewarding piece of work as well as being demanding. The rewarding part is seeing your scouts develop from being uncertain young scouts who sometimes you despair of to being confident, trained young adults who are ready to take on the world. It is seeing your scouts go from being near the bottom in a competition to being near the top and knowing that your training has worked. It is having a scout come to you to tell you that they want to get their Springbok Scout and watching them easily fulfill the requirements. it is the parent who comes to tell you that they can see the change in their child and how they wish they had known about scouts earlier.
The demanding part can be keeping calm….
