First of all, Thank You for volunteering your time, it comes as a surprise to some people that many of our uniformed Leaders were in just the same position as you, some, only a few years ago.

Each section has at least one “Leader” but may also have one or more “Assistant Leaders” and on the night of your volunteering, any one, or even more than one, may have activities planned, hopefully, you have already been made aware via OSM what is the plan for the evening, but if you haven’t, please ask when you arrive … the start of meetings can be quite chaotic as often, young people as well as Parents may have questions to ask of the Leaders, one way to alleviate some of that chaos might be to offer to run a game with the young people as they arrive, just a simple game that allows people to join in as they arrive. Hopefully this will lead to the Leader(s) finding time to fully advise you of the evenings plan.

More often than not, you are asked to be an extra set of eyes and ears, manage the young people as you would ordinarily manage young people in your care, if you see a situation emerging, somebody starting to get a little giddy or somebody starting to get upset, intervene. Initially it feels strange telling somebody else’s children to behave, but for the young people, this is perfectly normal, after all neither their teachers nor Section Leaders are usually their Parents.

If, upon learning what activities are planned for the evening, you feel comfortable running one of the activities, please speak up, unless there are hidden risks in the activity, no Leader should turn down such an offer. If you do not feel comfortable running an activity, ask what you can do to help, it may just be assisting another Leader or it may be to keep an overall eye on the group as a whole.

The funny thing about Scouting is that generally, the programme of activities may have only been agreed upon weeks or days (or occasionally hours) beforehand, we do not have a pre-set curriculum like Schools do, we have Leaders with varying degrees of experience who have ideas … usually they will be educational (age appropriate) and should always be fun. There is no such thing as a textbook on how to run activities … just experience.

There is one single underlying reason why we need volunteers like you, and foremost, that is the safety of both the young people and the volunteers.

Don’t be afraid to speak up, if you see something that you think could be done better, you might be right, or maybe your way has been tried before and failed, but without new ideas, the whole ethos of Scouting is impacted.

Practically every uniformed volunteer started out helping out at occasional meetings, if they enjoyed it or felt that they had something more to offer, then they may step up as a Section Assistant or an Assistant Section Leader … it is hoped, though not expected that you may do the same.

No you don’t, although we would prefer all of our volunteers to have a Scouting DBS, it is not mandatory for Parents helping out on the Parent Rota.

If you would however like to volunteer for camps, events or more regularly at Section Meetings then we will ask you to get a Scouting DBS, this does not cost you and is a relatively straight forward process. Apply for a Scouting DBS.

It is always great to hear of somebody wanting to get more involved in Scouting, we actually rely on it as we are all volunteers, check out this link for more details on the various roles on offer.

The easy answer is anybody who already volunteers, this might be another Parent who helps out from time to time, a uniformed volunteer at a Section meeting, or the Group Scout Leader … We are all volunteers.