What the role involves
Section Assistants are adult volunteers who assist the Section Leaders and Assistant Section Leaders in delivering the programme to young people in Scouting. You are eligible to wear the Adult Scout uniform and receive awards for their service to Scouting.
You can choose to support whichever age range you prefer to work with and activities which most interest you.
The role can involve any of the following depending on the level of assistance you wish to provide:
- Running games and activities as part of weekly section meetings and other section events.
- Assisting young people to achieve badges and awards.
- Assisting with residential experiences for the section.
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Assisting the section with taking part in a varied, exciting and safe programme of activities.
How much time do I have to commit?
There is no need to make an open ended commitment. We are flexible to how long you want to do the role for and can agree a fixed period of time. At the end of this time period, you can continue in the same role, agree a new role or step down depending on your circumstances and available time.
Beaver Colony meetings last 1 hour, Cub Pack meetings 1.5 hours and Scout Troop meetings 2 hours. We aim to provide Beavers with a minimum of one overnight residential experience a year, Cub Packs with at least one weekend camping experience and Scouts a number of weekend camping/expeditions per year. How many of this you can support will be down to whether or not you wish to attend the residential/camp event.
We recognise that you may have other commitments, therefore we operate a flexible volunteering policy based around how much time you are able to give us, even if that is only 1 evening a month on a regular basis it would be great to have you as part of our team. A significant number of adults taking on a Leader role do so for between 2 and 5 years, others stay until their child(ren) move on from the Group whilst others because of th enjoyment they get out of it stay on for more than 10 years. It all comes down to what time and for how you feel you can commitment to Scouting, we will work with you to help make the role fit around your availability as best as we can.
Is previous experience needed?
No. You do not need any previous experience of Scouting, or Guiding, as training and support will be provided. The Group Scout Leader will support you and ensure that you get the training you may need.
