Scoutmaster Podcast 210

I'm David Wilkes and I am an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 68 in Dallas, Texas. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me. Love what you're doing, Clark, Keep it up.

And now to you, Scoutmaster Kara came home from her guide meeting and she was feeling a little dizzy and her mom asked her why. And she said: probably because of all the good turns that we were doing. Oh boy, Yes, do a good turn daily. It's important, you know. Maybe not 10 or 12 in quick succession, because they do tend to make you a little dizzy. Kara, do me a favor, explain that to Giles for me, would you please.

Hey, this is podcast number 210. Hey,

Hey. Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Before we go any further, let's take a look at the mailbag. We heard from Jamie Barnes, who's an assistant scoutmaster, who wrote in to say thank you for the fantastic website with lots of useful information.

I found it so useful I purchased the app for my mobile device. Jamie, I'm glad to hear from you, Thank you for your kind words and I hope you find the app useful. Kendall Brown is an assistant scoutmaster in Huntsville, Alabama, and he wrote in to say I'm active at the district and council levels with various training activities. I've recently begun listening to the podcasts on the drive to and from work, beginning with the most recent, and working backwards. I'm really enjoying them and learning a lot. Sometimes I find myself working backwards too, Kendall, but he said thanks and keep up the good work.

I don't know how you do all that you do. Working backwards is probably the way that I get most of it done. No thanks, Thanks really, Kendall, for your kind words. I appreciate it. Craig Dixon is a scoutmaster with Troop 682 in Poe, California, and he wrote to say: I just found your site and app today while looking for a campfire story for this weekend.

There's no snow here in San Diego counties, so we can go camping this weekend. I'll be passing along the links to the site to my patrol leaders, council and my assistant scoutmasters, because everything I see on the site fits my vision of scouting.

Perhaps that's because I grew up and earned my eagle in Chester County Council, where you are as well, as attended Camp Horseshoe from 1974 to 79.. Well, Craig, how nice of you to get in touch And of course, we know the superiority of the scouts that come from Camp Horseshoe and Chester County Council. Great to hear from a Camp Horseshoe alumni.

So keep up the good work out there in California You're probably going to find actually a little snow would help. We really kind of went overboard with it this year, So we can send some help to you perhaps, but really probably not. But anyway, thanks for being in touch. This is a special podcast because it's all going to be taken up with an interview I conducted recently at the crack of doom.

One morning last week I had to get up extra early because I was talking to somebody halfway around the world And you know the time zones are a little crazy. It was actually it was quite a bit of a challenge for us to actually figure out what time we could actually get together and talk, But I'm really glad that we did, And so you'll be listening to that in a moment, as you'll hear us note during the interview.

You know we all understand on one level or another that scouting is a worldwide movement. Experiencing the fellowship of that is something that takes a little bit of effort, And I want to encourage you to make that effort. There are a number of different programs that the international division of our own organization, the Boy Scouts of America offers. Getting to know a little bit more about what is happening beyond our borders in scouting is a worthwhile pursuit, not only for you as a scouter, but for your scouts as well. Before I start the interview, one quick note. This podcast and everything else that we do is made possible by our backers.

I'm not going to go into a long explanation of how that happens, but go to scoutmastercgcom. Look for the support link right at the top of the page. I do want to take enough time to say thank you to Dave Long and Kevin Crock, who both signed up as backers this past week. Thanks very much, guys. It really means a lot.

Well, I had great fun conducting the interview you're about to listen to And I'm excited for you to hear it. So let's get started, shall we? The scout movement is forming a personal tie between the different foreign countries, a living force, a great brotherhood of service, a joyous work.

I want to introduce you to Elizabeth Elwell Cook, who is a girl guides leader with the Cambridge Garden Guides in Sydney, Australia. How are you doing today, Bass?

I'm very well, Clark, Pleased to be here. Tell us a little bit about what your experience was as a youth and a little bit about the Girl Guides movement in Australia. Guides have been going in Australia pretty much since the start in a small way.

I've just been reading up a little on it And we had a number of the ladies who were at the Crystal Palace Rally in London in 1910 actually move out to Australia not long after that And they started guiding in Australia, Being a Girl Guide since I was 10, I actually was introduced to Girl Guiding in England When I was on holidays we stayed with some friends in Cornwall and the girl across the road invited me along to a meeting and I was hooked And when I got back to Australia my aunt said: well, I was a Girl Guide. At that point she passed her Promise Badge on to me when I joined a unit in Beacroft. I was at First Beacroft. You mentioned a Promise Badge.

Tell me about a Promise Badge. Okay, When you make your promise to do your best to do your duty, you're given a Promise Badge which is a three leaf clover or trefoil. Mine is 80 years old.

It was passed to my aunt in 1944 by her guide leader and then passed on to me. We don't have a similar tradition for that, but that's very nice. That's very interesting. It's a pretty unusual thing here as well. I mean, you might see a more recent one passed down, but you don't normally see one that's 80 years old passed down for family.

It gets a lot of questions And so we left you in the brownies, I think. Yeah, I was a pack guide- That's basically the Girl Guide that goes and looks after a brownie unit for a few months as part of their service. But I went from Guides up to Ranger Guides, which would sew the 14 to 18s. Then I left.

How did they get you back? Well, I have two children. I have a six year old girl who I started to inquire about her joining Guides because I thought it would help And I thought she would enjoy it. And I have a son as well. He's two And I'd actually not. Three weeks before I came back being told we actually don't have a unit in the area that will take a six year old.

But another friend said on Facebook, said if somebody doesn't come and take over my daughter's Guides unit, they're going to close it down. And I went: no, no, they're not. I rang our region leader back and said: Guides unit, you need a leader for.

You know how I said I might come back when my daughter starts. I guess I'm starting now.

I think a lot of people would find that a familiar story, And so how long ago was that? That would have been last August.

Tell me about the group that you're working with. Is it called a group or a troop, or We call them units?

Okay, Yeah, instead of troops. And how many girls are involved with the unit that you're working with?

We started with 11 when I joined and we're now up to 15.. So we're growing.

And the ages of the girls involved? Not quite 10, up to just turn 13.

Okay, So the top age is 14.. Yeah, And then they move on into Ranger Guides.

Well, they're called Senior Guides now. Did you notice many changes over the time where you were involved as a girl and now as a leader? Quite a lot. The badge program has changed significantly. We've lost the names. Gumnut guides- That's the littlest ones, the sort of four to six-year-olds.

We still have them, but they're pre-juniors. And then we have junior guides, which are the brownies, And my girls are guides. They've always been guides. They still are, thank heavens. And Senior Guides are what used to be the Rangers Gumnut Guides. Huh, Gumnut Guides.

Yeah, we had to have an Australian. I love that. I love it. It's really, really gorgeous And it's a shame it's gone. Yeah, I was speaking with a scouter in Australia and they were telling me about the Joey Mobs. I love the name.

If you walked into a room where a Joey mob met and you had no idea what they were called and somebody said, all right, what would you call this Joey mob would come right to my mind: Yeah, totally, You know what I mean. I didn't realize they were called mobs actually. Yeah, that works. They're a mob of kangaroos in Australia. The girl guides it's only girls. Yes, we don't have boys.

Our scouts in Australia do allow girls. It has been discussed whether we should allow boys in. There is actually a place for a girls-only organization.

I think the boys need their own space as well. Personally, But you know the fact that we do such a lot of advocacy for women's issues in, certainly in countries around the world where women really are still downtrodden in ways that we don't experience here. That still gives those girls in those countries that space where they can sort of be out in public in a safe way. That's why guides are still girls. Could I characterize the place that you live as suburban.

Yes, What kind of activities do the girls do? We still camp. We usually, with my age group, have to go and use guiding properties to go camp, but the older girls can go wherever they like. We are actually at the foot of the Blue Mountains and that is the World Heritage National Park. That is amazing.

We've got the Megalong Valley That has some amazing hiking trails and we have access to glow worm caves and a few other things that are not that far away. It's like a rainforest version of the Grand Canyon, only bigger.

We have access to that. We go rock climbing, ice skating. At the end of last year We're going to be going out to the glow worm cave at Lisco.

So you do have to explain what a glow worm cave is to me. It's actually a train tunnel from the coal mine on the other side of the mountains that has been disused for a long time Down in the bush forest, as you'd say. Over the years, this concrete tunnel has gone back to nature and has been taken over by by glow worms. You can walk in there on the end of this bushwalk, following the tracks into the tunnel with a torch and wellies and you turn your torches off and you get these little blue sparkling things on the ceiling, a little bit like fireflies in color, And these are insects.

I think they're actually worm larvae. Oh, okay, And just to translate: a torch is flashlight, Wellies is like rubber boots. Yes, that's the one.

You're brilliant, so well, Okay, So what's a camp out? Look like You head off to one of the guide camps and you set up and you do the same thing that scouts all over the world do, I would imagine. I'm old school. I'm a big fan of still using bell tents. I don't know if you guys have those.

Rather than the canvas ridge tents, We have the round bell shaped tents that you roll the sides up on. In the morning They've got about 12 guy ropes around the side and a big pole, and they really do stand up in a high wind. I'll take those over a dome tent any day. I've seen small people's parasail on fly for a dome tent. I don't know if you have, but I have. I've watched dome tents do that on their own.

I've watched them float liltingly on the winds across fields and things like that. No, when the kids are trying to put their tents down and they're parasailing across the creek on them, then give me a bell tent. Any day, except for the mosquitoes, They do let the mosquitoes in.

If you were in a room with your guides right now and you said that it's time to do your absolute favorite activity, what would that be? Wow, You've taught me such a lot about patrol system over the last six months that I'm actually trying to get that working again.

Stopping them from chattering- I think it's their activity When we were programming at the end of the last year. They want to do more outdoor stuff. They want to do more craft stuff. I know it's a bit of a stereotype for the Girl Guides Association sitting and doing their crafts, but yeah, we do definitely get out and about and doing stuff, but they like making stuff.

What do you make? Anything I can throw at them to make.

We were making sit-upons on Monday night. I don't know if you have those. I know what they are. It's an incredibly useful thing and it surprises me that Boy Scouts haven't totally adopted that. But you're talking about a little pad that you can take while camping and you always have a nice spot to sit that way. Yeah, ours usually aren't padded, They're usually just a square of tarp that's able to be folded up really small.

It's just to keep you dry and, hopefully, keep the bull ants out of your trousers. The bull ants, Yeah, they bite.

Okay, so we have fire ants. I'm not quite sure which wins for sting, actually, whether it's a fire ant or a bull ant, but yeah, a bull ant stings. Not a whole lot of fun. If you ever have an Australian guest and you take them to the beach, like a friend of ours in Boston did a few years ago, look at them really strangely as they gingerly tiptoe into the water around the seaweed and the rocks and anything else that's underneath, and they'll go.

What are you doing? And we'll be looking at them marching into the water absolutely fearless, going.

What are you doing? Haven't you got anything that's gonna sting you to death in there?

Seaweed? That's the place where box jellyfish hide. They'll put you in hospital for a week. It's a dangerous country down there. We're just used to looking before we sit Right, yes, And that counts not just for the ground- but underneath the loose seat when you're on camp.

Because redbacks- And what are redbacks? They're a family of Black Widow Spider with a red stripe. You told me that you were working to try and restore some idea of the patrol system with your unit and you're dealing with girls from the age of 10 to 14..

What do they think of this whole idea? They're really warming up to the idea. Actually, When I started, the entire system had actually fallen apart. We had 11 girls, one patrol leader and three patrol names to give you a picture.

So my second night back it was like, okay, who's in what patrol? Ah, it was pretty much the response: Okay, who's the patrol leader?

Yeah, okay, Let's have an election now. Let's get sorted into groups, find your patrol quarters and we're Cambridge Gardens Guides, So let's pick some flower names just as a little guideline. And we've gone from there.

So I spent my first six months working with the girls because we had so much to do. I had to sort of do everything for them to start with, because nothing had been done with them for like two or three years.

You know, I basically went right: okay, for a certain amount of time, each meeting, I'm going to give you guys an activity to do and you're going to work in a team to do it. Now I'm getting to the point where it's like, okay, you're going to go off into your patrols And here's all the gear you need to start planning stuff. Here are some ideas.

Start planning And then you're going to get back into unit in council. We haven't quite got patrol leaders council happening yet, but certainly getting back into unit in council and seeing what they've come up with And that's getting interesting. I've literally started with: pick up your badge books, see what you'd like to have a go at, And they're going from there, They're taking it from there. A lot of people end up in that exact situation where they become a leader and they look at the state of things in the unit or the troop or the group and have an idea of what they would like to see. And a lot of times it has to begin with modeling what you want to see, doing a little bit more than you would really like to do. Ultimately, you'd rather that the guides or the scouts do these things, But you have to show them.

If they're unfamiliar with the whole idea, you have to kind of demonstrate it to them. You have to actually take on the role of what you would like the youth to do, ultimately model that for them and then hand it over to them.

And it's in the handing over where there could be a slip up here and there, but you're beginning to see that work, Yes, Yes, Very slowly, I guess. It takes a certain amount of time to break a habit And it takes a certain amount of time to develop a habit as well, And that's sort of the theory I'm working on.

So they have actually done all of the suggesting for the program for this coming year. I've taken their list of suggestions and I gave them a survey at the end of last year, a simple one saying: okay, what did you like, What did you not want to do again? Please bear in mind that some of these things you don't want to do again you might have to do, because that's part of being a guide.

But one of them- hated first aid was like: well, you know, we can't avoid that one. Yeah, The other trick was to hand them a page with the alphabet written on it and say, right, I want something that you'd like to have. Go at for every single letter of the alphabet.

And from that and a couple of other bits and pieces that they suggested, I've put together a year's program and I've just slotted it in logically around the stuff that I get from state and region to say, okay, we've got our adventure in the garden coming up, or we've got clean up Australia days next weekend, thinking days this weekend, etc. The bits that they're interested in.

I've sort of slotted them in as a lead up to those And then I've tried to make it so that at least half of our two hour meeting they're doing. That's a brilliant idea with the alphabet.

Is that one of your own or did you find that somewhere? No, that was from my learning partner.

So a guide- an experienced guide leader, that is- is there to help. So here we are. You're building up this patrol system. You're beginning to see it take root.

You're beginning to see the girls get interested in it and kind of catch on to the idea: What do you want to see happen over the next year? Term by term, I'm slowly rolling back what I'm doing and actually making them organise more. They wanted to have a waterfront night.

It's like, okay, you girls are going to bring the stuff along for that. I'll have a couple of backups out the back. It's okay. Getting them to remember to bring things along when they say they want to do something is a real challenge. I literally have to go back to basics and teach them to be organised. I've gone and actually put together a stationary box- $50 each stationary box per patrol, you name it.

Everything is there. So they've got the tools there. Because the tools weren't there either, The equipment had run down to nothing. We had two functional bell tents out the back and a bunch of stuff that was completely disorganised.

Now that I've been able to get those things together, it's easy to say okay, so, and that they're going. What do we do with our patrol log book?

Okay, well, you know, I'd expect that you would put the date down, the day down, the date down, and then write down what you're talking about. And they're beginning to catch on. We'll see.

We did that two weeks ago. Would I be right in assuming that the girls that you're working with to build this patrol system up and to kind of shape that personal responsibility and autonomy, that there's not much else in their lives where they would be exercising this quite to the extent that you're asking of them? No, they are not. They are absolutely not. I really scared the parents at one point last year because, off the cuff, I had asked one of the girls what her mom's phone number was. I can't remember why, but anyway it's like: oh, that's in my phone somewhere.

I've left that. At home I have an entire unit of Girl Guides who don't know their own phone number. They don't know the mom's phone number.

So we set up this scenario the following week at the end of the meeting, quite by accident. But it was good because the parents started to walk in as we were having this conversation and their eyes got wider.

Okay, you're out with 5,000 other Guides and you get lost. You get separated from us, You with me, yet, girls, Right, Someone steals your bag and everything in it, your ID, the whole lot. You have nothing but what you're standing up in and your unit. That's it.

What are you going to do? I'll call mom.

How are you going to call mom on my phone? Your phone's just been stolen.

What's your mom's number? I don't know.

What are you going to do? Go find a policeman, Yeah, okay, What are you going to tell the policeman?

Well, they'd probably need to know your name, your mom's name and your address. Do you know your address? I can't spell my street name. This went on for 20 minutes as the parents are sidling into the room and the parents' eyes were getting wider and wider and we finally got it through to them.

Girls, you're going to go home, You're going to make sure you know your address backwards and you're going to make sure that you know at least three telephone numbers, whether that be your mom, your dad, your aunt, your grandma, whatever. But by the time I was seven years old, girls, I knew my mom's number, my grandma's number, my aunt's number, my dad's work number by heart, and I knew my address as well, and we moved house a couple of times.

You know what I'm going to be talking to my scouts about sometime soon. I'm curious about that.

Tell me about Thinking Day. Okay, you have Founder's Day, right, We do. Yes, It's the same day.

What does one think about? We think about the Girl Guides in other parts of the world, and particularly the ones that are less well off than us.

The Thinking Day Fund goes to providing equipment, uniforms and everything else to Girl Guides in countries that don't have what we have This year. The Millennium Development Goal we're focusing on is universal education, So the money that we collect on the 22nd of February will all go to one country from each of the five regions around the world.

So we've got Vincent and the Grenadines in the Western Hemisphere. We've got Armenia in the European region, We've got Egypt in the Arab region, Bernina in the Africa region and Bangladesh in the Asia Pacific region and we are part of the Asia Pacific region, Australia.

The tradition in Guides is that on Thinking Day every guide brings a primary unit of their currency, so a dollar for the Thinking Day Fund. So it might be a repeat if they're in India, It might be a ruble if they're in Russia. It's a unit of currency from all over the world, from every guide goes to the Thinking Day Fund to help.

It started in 1932, I think We don't have quite as highly an organized effort as that. I think that's just a wonderful idea: Bring the fundamental unit of your currency.

That just makes so much sense. Thinking Day itself is actually Saturday, the 22nd of February, and we whole region happening.

Everybody we can get together from the region will be showing up and we will be doing activities relating to the theme for this year and we will have a mass promise ceremony. Else who are coming up, Various other important ceremonies and bits and pieces as well and presentations and it's a really, really big thing in Guides. I could talk to you, I could talk to somebody in South Africa or Tunisia or Switzerland or Great Britain or Canada, Once you broach the subject of scouting, you have an entire world of things in common. The names may be a little bit different, The terminology may be a little bit different. There's a common human experience in it that is really kind of miraculous. I wish I could remember the rest of the words to an Australian guiding song, and it talks about going overseas and meeting a complete stranger who you realize is another guide just as relevant for scouts.

It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, what you do. You are my sister in guiding, You're my friend I can confide in, no matter if. No matter if you're a different race. I should probably sing it. I would love to hear that You are my sister in guiding. You're a friend I can confide in, no matter if you're a different race, Young or old, from some far places.

Sisters in guiding, We share a secret drive to make this world a better place in which to be alive. Oh well, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much that means. I'm always looking for songs. I found out the other day that Cookaburra sits in the old gum tree, which I'm sure you all sing.

I remember learning it in elementary school. Every child in Australian schools sings it and I found out the other day it's a guide song. No kidding, It was written for the world jamboree held in 1932 in Australia.

Bass, it's been wonderful to talk to you today and I certainly have learned something about guiding, but it's always so nice to talk to somebody who's experiencing scouting in maybe a slightly different way, in another part of the world. When it comes down to it, the fundamentals are the same.

It's still the same founder, It's still the same wonderful idea, and there isn't anybody else out there that I'm aware of doing the job that you're doing. Once again, thank you so much