Big thank you from Lisburn.com

Could you help to piece together the history of local scouts?

Shouting For Scouting In Lisburn District With Paul Clydesdale

Beavers and their leadersat the Fun Day US26-785SP The Beavers enjoying their Fun day at St. Marks. US26-783SP One of the circus performers keeps the Beavers enthralled. US26-784SP

AS we have said before in this column, 2007 sees the 100th birthday of scouting (that's nearly as old as some of our leaders!)

To mark this, we have decided locally, to write a History of Scouting within the Town (oops City Boundaries) and the Museum have very kindly agreed to host an exhibition to help us celebrate our centenary.

  • So what do we need from you? Well, basically any of the following:

  • Details of any founder members in any of the Groups within the District;

  • Details of any of your parents/ grandparents who took part in Group/District camps and Jamborees etc;

  • Information surrounding interesting Scouting milestones in the District;

  • Details of long service of members past and present;

  • Any old uniforms, badges, handbooks and other Scouting memorabilia;

  • Details of any Scouters in your family who received awards;

  • Outstanding items of Group/District achievement;  

  • Any interesting historical data surrounding any of the Groups/Scouts in Lisburn; and

  • Any old/not so old photographs showing Scouting within the District, with a suitable caption.

Remember Scouting in Lisburn District has a proud history and does much to develop citizenship and quality leaders in all walks of life.

Your contact point for all of this is Jim Hilland, a young at heart Scouter. He can be contacted on 028 92 664723 or at 135 Benson Street, Lisburn, BT28 2AF. So go on, have a search around your attic/basement etc and give us a shout.

Summertime and the living is easy! This will be our last column for a couple of months as Scouting traditionally breaks up this time of the year.
But don't panic or despair, because we'll be back in August with tales from Scout Groups within the District who camped across Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe and indeed the New World.

Later on you will read about 1st Ballymacash Scouts who head off the to the USA this week. Of course not every group in the District goes quite so far.

Indeed my own Cub Pack from 1st Hilden and our good friends from 6th Lisburn (Old Warren) probably travelled the shortest distance, of any Lisburn Pack, to camp this year - going all the way to Ardnavalley at Shaw's Bridge.

We took Jamie Oliver's School Dinners series as our inspiration basing the weekend around healthy eating and living, with plenty of fun and games but most importantly - food. The camp was a great success with the boys learning new life skills.

Did you know (and not lot of people know this!!) that 2005 has been designated the Year of the Volunteer throughout the UK, with the Government encouraging people to volunteer for charity work.

We in Scouting, rely totally on volunteer support in providing the attractive, challenging and inspiring programmes for our 500,000 members in the United Kingdom.

Our Chief Scout Peter Duncan (he of Blue Peter fame) has written to all adults working in the movement thanking them for all this hard work.

Over 100,000 volunteers work for the Scouts in the UK, which is approximately the same size as the combined workforces of the BBC (24,000), the Royal Navy (36,000) and McDonalds (40,000) put together. Adults working in Scouting contribute in excess of 364 million hours of voluntary work each year to their local communities. If this voluntary contribution had to be paid for it would cost the UK in excess of �350m.

Here are a few interesting facts and figures

  • 75,000 adults do voluntary work as Leaders in the Scout movement approximately another 25,000 work informally in support roles.

  • Scouting in the UK has nearly 500,000 members.

  • Scouting is the largest co-educational youth movement in the United Kingdom.

  • In 2007 the UK will host the World Scout Jamboree for 60,000 young people from 216 countries and territories around the world. This event has more participants than the Olympics and will be one of the many events to mark Scouting's centenary!

  • Scouting is the largest membership organisation in the world working for peace.

  • Scouting operates in 216 countries and territories. There are only 6 countries that don't have Scouting.

  • Worldwide Scouting has 28 million members both male and female and operates in nearly every country in the world.

News from the Sections next week.