Scouts can still have a role for youngsters

IN my job, it’s always a pleasure to get some good news, so I was very pleased to get an email from a local Scout group recently, saying they had seen a rise in membership.

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It was an increase in one district, and the rise in their membership was modest, but it was positive news nonetheless.

The rise covered Scouts (ages 10-14) and Explorer Scouts (14-17) in East Cornwall, and it has led to a new group being set up in Looe, which starts on Friday, October 5.

One of the volunteers explained: “The Explorers are going to school or college and are telling their friends about what they did at a section meeting or what they did at a weekend camp, and their friends are saying: ‘How do I join?.”

I think this was such good news for me, as I was a Scout myself.

I joined as a clueless teenager, and went on to learn how to cook on a little stove called a Trangia, how to put up a tent, and read a map and navigate with a compass - among other things. It also got me out of my bedroom and often out into the open air.