On 15 Jun, 21:04, "Eddie Langdown"
btinternet.com> wrote:>>I am having on heck of time getting YL places for my ES and one of them has
>>asked if instead of going to troop night every week she could organise a
>>district camping competition for the service section of her CSAD/Silver
>>DofE
>
>> Her plan is to get a team of three or four of them who would use explorer
>> meetings once a month to plan and practice their project, probably over
>> the winter and then run it next may. They would probably have dry run
>> over Easter using other ES from my unit.
>
>> To cover the training aspect they have asked me to run 2 more YL modules
>> and ask the County team to come and tell them how they run their
>> competition.
>
>> This gives her more than the 24 hours she needs an element of training and
>> it will be spread over 6 months.
>
>> She got the idea because I was a judge at the County event yesterday and
>> she came to see what happened, but there were only 5 teams. I asked one of
>> the other judges why he didn't have a team this year and he said he didn't
>> have the time to train them to the required standard.
>
>> My suggestion is that rather than having a formal competition they could
>> restrict it to a competition camp, and include best BBQ, best gadget,
>> ballista competition and maybe best camp fire stunt?
>
>> Does anybody else have ideas?
>
>> --
>> Stephen Rainsbury
>> ESL Agathoid Explorer Scout Unit
>>
www.agathoid.org.uk(removethis bit)
>
> I think this is another of these 'Parallel Universe' within scouting.
> I can't remember a camping competition around here for 30 years, but I do
> hear of places where are going strong, and of some almightly rows about
> judging. One leader sent his patrol along with standard Fire Shelter, only
> to have them marked-down as it was deemed to be unsafe. I hear of others
> going with hike tents and losing marks for not having or beng able to pitch
> a patrol ridge tent. I think it is really sad that kids are often the
> victims in all this confusion.
> Yes, I'd rather have a camp and simply judge who is the most happy, well fed
> and safe, have a few simple challenges and what they do and how they do it
> is up to them.
>
> Eddie Langdown 16th Bermondsey London
my version runs like this:
patrols camp in the style that they normally use...
they are then judged on:
hygiene of larders, litter, tent pitching, (yes you can get a dome
tent as badly wrong as an icelandic), kitchens, tidiness of kit.
Easy peasy and everybody happy... I want the come back the next year,
not hate me and never come to another one!
