Our cubs section needs a new leader team to get it going after a break over lockdown. We need four volunteers. Seize the day and be one of them!

One of the roles is Section Leader, who brings the team together and also works with our Group Scout Leader.

As a team you’ll pick badges you want to work towards each term. Most weeks you’ll plan a fun and challenging game and one or two badge-related activities. Most terms you’ll be able to take your Cubs on a Group, District or County activity outside of the weekly meetings – or plan one yourself.

You’ll have lots of help from our other leaders, who are all volunteers like you.

Being a leader is a lot of fun. It is also the most important volunteer role in Scouting. If you are organised and would enjoy helping our cubs challenge themselves, learn by doing and have fun doing it, you can help make Scouting happen for our cubs section. They will be very happy to see you!

Get in touch!

I have questions!

What about COVID?
We are planning a new programme of activities for the coming term that we can adjust as restrictions are stepped down or up. The national Scout Association has developed some accessible training on how to include COVID considerations when planning a programme. 

I don’t know anything about scouting?
Nearly everybody in scouting is a volunteer, many of us new to it ourselves, and bringing diverse interests and experiences. What we have in common is a belief in scoutings’ purpose and values. There is lots of support and resources to help you, even if you’ve never been involved in scouting before.

I’m not sure if I’m cut out for it?
No superpowers are required. Being a leader is a lot of fun, and it is even more fun when you’ve helped plan the activities. Seize the moment and try it for a term or a few weeks, there’s no other way to find out!

The Scout Association is following the governments’ four-stage approach to resuming normal activities. It has developed guidelines for what can be done safely at each stage. 1st Trumpington are making plans to resume activities in the new school term according to those guidelines.

Nationally we are now in “amber” which means we can do some outdoors activities. The alert level will hopefully reduce further over time, but it could also increase again, so we are keeping in mind that either could happen.

It looks likely that in Autumn term the sections will be putting together a mixture of digital and face-to-face activities.

As well as following Scout Association guidance we have to respect the measures the Fawcett school has put in place to enable a safe return to school for its staff and pupils. We are currently finding out from the school whether they can let us use their facilities as previously.

Our volunteers are all keen to get the group back to a full programme. We are currently doing additional COVID-related training and planning, so please bear with us.

We would love to welcome you to the team too! Your support is doubly important in these uncertain times. Just follow the Volunteer link at the top of this page.

The group is still going strong in COVID lockdown, with Beavers and Scouts sections holding virtual meetings, leaders taking training, and the exec taking care of the group’s resources. We all look forward to resuming normal operations, which will we expect to happen at the same time that schools go back. It currently looks like schools might go back in September, possibly still with some anti-COVID measures.

In the meantime, we are approaching our third anniversary, and our second Annual General Meeting of the Group Scout Council (GSC). This is where everyone with an interest in the group and how it is run can hear the trustees’ report, elect new trustees, make decisions and offer their views on what should be the priorities for the next year.

The Group Scout Council is made up off all the group’s stakeholders including parents, leaders, helpers and Scout Patrol Leaders. All are encouraged to participate in the AGM.

The trustees are the Group Executive Committee (GEC), which looks after the group’s money and other resources and makes sure it is following the Scout Association’s rules, including delivering the Scouting mission to actively engage and support young people in their personal development, empowering them to make a positive contribution to society.

This year’s AGM will be held virtually at 1930-2000 on Wednesday July 15th:

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/79258593101?pwd=eVNXbEZuK1lYcmV5cUY0aUNHMlJsdz09
Meeting ID: 792 5859 3101
Password: 1sttrump

An agenda is available online in DropBox. Please send requests to put items on the agenda to chairman@1sttrumpingtonscouts.org.uk

The trustee’s reports will be posted a the week before the AGM.

Please come and help the trustees by giving your feedback.

With regret, all Scouting has been suspended for all sections until further notice.

As a group; the Leaders and Group Executive have been monitoring the current situation with regard to COVID-19, however after the statement from the Prime Minister last night the Scout Association has informed all groups across the country that face-to-face scout meetings, activities and events are to be suspended from today until further notice

This is because the safety of everyone involved in Scouts, both young people and adults, is our number one priority. That is always at the heart of our decision making.

Events currently being planned will hopefully still go ahead, but postponed to after the current period of public health measures.

The Section Leaders and Group Executive Committee will continue to monitor and re-evaluate based on Government and Scout Association guidance and will keep you all updated about when Scouting at the 1st Cambridge Scout Group can resume.

Parents, please keep monitoring your emails for further updates for Scouting.

We thank you for your support at this difficult time; we know that this will come as a huge disappointment to many of our supporters and members.

Yours in Scouting,

The 1st Trumpington Leadership Team and Executive Committee

In the Scouts every challenge is an opportunity to grow, so I’m happy to announce that 1st Trumpington has TWO coming up.

Can you help? Absolutely!

Our first challenge is storage space. This falls in the category of “problems it is good to have” because the reason we need storage is because we’ve grown to over 60 young members. Three busy sections mean we are building up a collection of kit for activities and trips away. At present we are renting part of a container in Sawston but in the long run we would ideally like to get the use of a disused garage, or a small corner of land where we can park a 20ft shipping container, somewhere in Trumpington. A unit that size could serve a second group, which is our ambition!

We will be more than happy to do maintenance and even pay a peppercorn rent. Please keep your eye out and pass on our plea to any likely contacts, and if anyone wants to talk please get in touch with me.

Our second challenge is leadership, which is not to say that we lack it, because we have an awesome Group leader in the person of Geoffrey Coad, but he has been promoted into a County level role which he’ll be doing full time from July. So 1st Trumpington are on the hunt for a new GSL.

GSL is a very people-oriented job, and it is all about helping our team of leaders. Whatever they need to run a great programme, GSL is there. Group-level plans, working out a training programme, telling the trustees what the group needs, being our representative at District and County level so we get invited to events, these are all part of the job. GSL is also a Scout leader themselves and can get involved in running activities too. Many GSLs have no prior experience in Scouting (in common with most of us in the team) so that need not be any barrier. All GSLs get to know a lot of people in the local area and have a lot of fun.

Want to find out more? Know someone who might like to find out more? Get in touch with me!

That’s it for the challenges. They are toughies but as always, we’ll crack them by working together. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Amyas Phillips
Chair of Trustees

Beavers and Cubs attended Christmas Camp at 1st Whittlesford and Duxford Scouts’ amazing hut over the weekend. This is one of our annual events and always features Christmas crafts, bouldering, caving, camp cooking, campfire, spooky stories, s’mores, movie night, and sleeping in the loft.

Thanks to our friends at 1st Whittlesford and Duxford!

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A colour party is a group of Beavers, Cubs and Scouts given the job of carrying our flag at formal events. Young members from all three sections formed a colour party for the Remembrance Sunday ceremonies at Trumpington war memorial. Also present were Trumpington Guides, the congregation, officers and clergy of Trumpington’s Parish church St. Mary and St. Michael, and numerous other members of the local community. Traffic was halted for the two minutes’ silence. The colour party did a fine job.

Wow what a busy summer we had! Beavers, Cubs and Scouts all had a great programme of activities up to the summer break, including building various kinds of shelters. We ran our first ever AGM (we’re a charity so we have to have one) where the Scouts organised the venue and a BBQ for us (thanks team!) and the exec committee also got a grilling. Lots of Beavers graduated into Cubs and several Cubs graduated into Scouts. We wrapped up the for the summer holidays with the traditional campfire by the river Cam, where pretty much everyone received hard-earned badges, followed up with toasted marshmallows and a singalong. Then Geoffrey Coad our GSL had a big role in organising the massive CamJam camp during the summer holidays – something we’ll hope to send some of our growing Scout section along to in future.

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As a new Scout group we’ve been really focused on getting ourselves up and running. I am very happy to say we have definitely achieved that! We are now well into our second year, with established Beavers, Cubs and Scouts sections.

Now, to keep on doing what we do, we need to reach out into our local community. We need to make new friends, engage new members, and spark new volunteers.

That means telling our story. A picture is worth a thousand words, so sharing great photographs and video is a really important way for us to do this.

Everybody is rightly cautious about how to do that so the group executive committee have put their heads together to create a brand new Social Media Policy. It encourages everybody to take pictures and sets out simple guidelines for how to do that appropriately and how 1st Trumpington Scouts can use them in our communications.

For parents the policy also explains how you can tell us your preferences for how we use photographs and video featuring your child.

Whether you are a parent, leader or young member, please take great pictures on your next activities! You can give them to me or one of our contributors to post about them here, or become a contributor yourself (just ask me). GSL will review your post and pow! You’re telling our story.

1st Trumpington have been growing steadily since starting up in September 2017, and we’ve ambitions for a lot more! Having had some generous help from Cambridgeshire Scouts to get up and running we’re now a fully fledged Scout group with three sections and an executive committee.

Our focus for the next year is to keep growing the group and put it on a sustainable path. The most important thing we can do is to help volunteers and young members find us, and that means making ourselves easy to find and easy to get in contact with. With that goal in mind, welcome to our new website!

This complements our public Facebook page and our Facebook group and Online Scout Manager for parents and leaders, and will become a place for all kinds of useful information and for telling 1st Trumpington’s story.

Please let me know your suggestions for how to improve it, or send me content to post. Members are extremely welcome to add posts themselves – ask me or Geoffrey for a login.