Want to be a TV star for a day?  How about joining us as we take a tour of the new CBBC studios…

Fidn out more here…

25th – 31st May 2013

In Summer 2013, our Cubs have the chance to take part in CubJam 2013, the only event of its type for Cub Scouts in the UK.

Find out more here…

More information is here…

Nationally over 525,000 young people are now part of the scouting adventure, the highest number for more than ten years. Our scout group alone has seen a 107% increase in membership in just twelve months.

Baden-Powell chose Saint George to be The Patron Saint of The Scout Association. He felt that the Saint George of legend set a good example of faith, courage and perseverance. Scouts throughout the UK celebrate St George’s Day as an occasion to renew their promise, and this year showed just how many young people and adults alike are now part of the movemnt.

Chief Scout Bear Grylls added: ‘More young people are realising that Scouting offers them so much – whether it’s the opportunity to go on a big international adventure or the chance to learn and hone vital life skills.’

Scouting is the largest mixed youth Movement in the UK, delivering everyday adventure to girls and boys aged 6-25.

Make a difference

These positive results are only possible through the hard work of our 100,000 volunteers. But with 35,818 young people still waiting to join Scouting, one of our biggest challenges is finding enough volunteers. To find out how you can support Scouting visit billingescouts.org.uk/volunteer.

More information will be available here in due course, in the meantime please download the flier.

BookBridge is an international charity run by German scouts, who set up and run education centres in some of the poorest parts of the world.

The 2,700 books you collected last year went to open a new education centre in Cambodia, which has since welcomed hundreds of people through it’s doors.

The centres help local people out of poverty by providing basic education, including learning English to help them find a job.

This years collection will be in the first two weeks of July.

We’d like you to collect unwated English books. Children’s books and basic school textbooks are really welcome, but anything that is in reasonable condition will be fantastic.

Your hard work smashed last years target of 500 books, coming in with an eventual 2,700 books! Lets see if we can raise even more this year!

Find out more:

• email: bookbridge@billingescouts.org.uk

They left their families behind last Sunday to fly off and are currently taking part in a variety of different community and environmental projects before returning on New Year’s Day.

A long, long way together

The expedition participants from Bexley and Bromley have worked together throughout this year to raise the funds for the expedition. This has paid for materials to build a new play area and provide equipment for the local young people who have been orphaned by a combination of HIV/AIDS and the recent humanitarian crisis.

Who’s coming to town?

On Christmas Day, they will prepare a special meal for the local children before a surprise visit from Father Christmas, who will hand out presents.

Explorer Scout Rachel, 17, from Bickley said: ‘It’s a great opportunity to go to another country and exchange life skills, to leave the Kenyans with resources they need and to have memories of a Christmas both they and us will never forget. It’s an amazing feeling!’

Keep up with the Scouts’ adventure by following their blog.

[from scouts.org.uk]

Local schools formed a massive part of our collection process, and we must give particular thanks to Billinge Chapel End Primary School, and Hawkley Hall High School for their hard work and amazing contributions.

Many books were also received from Beavers, Cubs and Scouts from our Scout Group, and from others in the local area.  A donation of a tonne of encyclopaedias (they honestly did feel that heavy when we were packing them!) from the 8th Wigan Scout Group was particularly appreciated and exactly the kind of thing BookBridge were looking for.

In August, our efforts were highlighted in the local paper (click on the photo to see the article about us which appeared in the St Helens Reporter).  It just goes to show that even after 104 years, Scouts are still making a difference as a force for good in the world.

Since our books were collected in July, we’ve been eagerly following developments as the books winged their way out to Cambodia, and this week, we received an email from the BookBridge team…

Dear UK Scouts, 

you collected for children in Cambodia 75.000 books. Some of you talked to their schools others collected within their families and friends. We as professional book collectors really could´t believe how many books you collected. What you´ve achieved is really fantastic!

End of June we sorted the books with the help of lot´s of scouts at  Sherbrooke Campsite. We managed together to ship two containers to Cambodia- one to Siem Reap in the north and one to Takeo in the South. 

The two containers arrived in October at Cambodia. The books you collected were enthusiastically welcomed and unloaded by cambodian Scouts. As well the cambodian scouts helped us to build up the shelves and to stamp the books and to set up the library. 

Dear Scouts, with your book collection you are a counter pillar in a joint program, that aims to give children access to education which is a key factor in the fight againts poverty and unequality. 

From all the children and partner in Cambodia we want to overbring you a very big…

THANK YOU!!!!

Enclosed I send you a picture presentation where you can follow the whole process. As a thank you some cambodian children sang a song for you which you can see here: http://vimeo.com/33540192

Please help to make sure that everybody that helped in the bookcollection gets the information. 

We are very thankful for all your work. Together we can do something!!!

It would be very nice if you could give me short feedback about your collection!

Martina, Lisa, Carsten, Daisy, Alex, Simon, Anu, Tunga, Sokhan

Having spent two weeks of my life collecting, counting, checking and packing books, not to mention the three months spent planning, I honestly am amazed by the generosity of local people, and of our country as a whole.

This year it was avoiding the tress hidden in the fog, and not the usual getting stuck in the mud that slowed people down, but despite that we were successful once again with Luke P finishing 3rd and Victoria 1st in her age group.

Scout leader Stephen Makin said “It was a fantastic performance.  We’re really proud to have even more medals to add to our collection.”

Cubs and Scouts from Billinge take part in a wide variety fo competions over the year.  Just last month we won a host of medals and awards at the District swmming gala.

More…

• See more photos and news about events and activities…
• Find out more about Scouts in Billinge

The Cubs were quite sure what it was they enjoyed the most:

Reiss: “I liked everything this weekend, but I liked the hot air balloons the best.”

Josh: “On camp I enjoyed drawing on the hot air balloons – they were brilliant!”

Matthew C: “What I enjoyed was the games out on the field because we got to play football. I also enjoyed the science because it was fun.”

Updates from the weekend were posted on the Group’s twitter account @billingescouts (twitter.com/billingescouts), which you can visit to see what we did and read more of the Cubs own thoughts about the weekend.

The weekend could not have happened without the support of adult volunteers, and particularly Chris, a parent helper, without whom we would not have been able to run the weekend at all, so thank you.  We always need more helpers so that we can make camps available to as many of the young people as we can, so if you are interested in helping on a future camp then please do get in touch.

There will be another camp in December.