A Year in Cubs – 2020

Normally our section reports would be delivered verbally at our AGM, and there would be a report for each Pack. Because of the impact of COVID-19, and the AGM being run via Zoom this year we have produced this joint report. It only touches on what the Pack’s do, but if you would like to find out more then you should consider joining our leadership team. It is fun – just ask any of the leaders.

Both Packs have had a really busy and successful year. Each Pack has five leaders 23 or 24 Cubs. This year we have been pleased to welcome Tom Kivlin to the Wrde leader team. He has immediately shown his worth by becoming an archery instructor.

Between the two Packs, the Cubs have earned an amazing 588 badges. We are particularly proud of the nine Chief Scouts Silver Award – the highest a Cub can achieve. The majority of the rest are made up of Challenge, Activity and Staged badges. The latter include nights away, paddle sports, digital citizen and emergency aid. Definitely some ‘skills for life’ there.

Adventure

Cubs kayaking on the lake

Our adventurous activities, often run as a round-robin (or carousel) included kayaking, rafting, archery, cycling and climbing and we’ve hiked all over the place. Indeed some of our older Cubs planned their route and navigated a 13km route between Cricklade and Highworth. Whilst others managed to endure a wet survival camp. We even managed to squeeze in a trip to Faringdon skate park where the Cubs had a go on the ramps with their scooters.

The World

We enjoyed a snappy trip to Crocodile World, celebrated world festivals – including Cub games from around the world – and had a visit and presentation, with food samples (very popular) from one of our young leaders & their parent at Chinese New Year. We took part in the annual District Cub Bowling event at Shaw Ridge ten pin bowling with another max attendance (180 people). This was also linked this year to the World Jambowlee; for which we have a certificate in the hut. Strangely we didn’t win this year!

Supporting Others

Collecting rubbish at the Rec

As part of the programme about reducing our waste, Wrde Cubs ran a litter pick for an evening at the Rec where we collected 6 bags of rubbish. We also made a ‘superfab’ effort for operation Christmas Child by putting together 10 boxes which were sent to Liberia. Carol singing, in the rain, raised a humongous £230 towards the defibrillator and left puddles in people’s houses! The Cubs have had a go practising CPR as well as bandaging and treating burns. We hope to expand on this in a future term when we have the training defibrillator. This really could save someone’s life.

Leadership and Games

Cooking on fires

We provided loads of opportunities for the Cubs to practise their leadership skills. For example, the sixers ran an entire evening full of games, with only a little help with crowd control!
And while on the subject of games – one evening was spent roaming Highworth playing a Highworth Monopoly wide game. This was highly successful even though it poured with rain. The Cubs also found the Lego Challenge evenings (in the style of a Scrapheap Challenge) and a visit to the ‘Better Extreme Trampoline Park’ to be fantastic activities.

COVID-19

Sadly the year came to a rather sudden end as far as face to face Scouting was concerned, but we did start sending information about badges that could be done at home towards the end of the year. There will be more information on this in next year’s report; when you can also find out about frogs – at least we hope so as some of the Cubs took a Starter Tadpole Kit home and we hear reports that some of the tadpoles are growing legs. Is it a froggy takeover of Highworth?

Thanks
Both Akelas would like to thank the leader teams for their support. They also want to say thanks to the parents and Cubs. They need your support, and couldn’t do it on their own!

If you would like to see more photos of our activities then please do look at our gallery

The Vorda and Wrde Cub Pack Leader Teams.