Dean Warner with his Sunday Troop

Volunteering for today’s Scouts is a flexible operation with lots of fun thrown in as Scout Leader Dean Warner discovered. A trained mechanic, Dean was made redundant last year and his new job on the night shift in the warehouse at Tescos gave him no free time for normal meetings. His answer for the Scouts at the Church Riverside Scout Group in Leighton Buzzard was to change meeting times to Sunday evenings. He is the first in the UK to offer this unique arrangement. And it’s been a great success.

“It has given Scouting in the area a real boost,” says District Commissioner Matthew Slade-Pedrick. It is a hit for Scouts such as James Theobald, 12 who was one of the first to escape Sunday evening TV programmes for the much more exciting physical, action-packed meetings at the Scout hut. He said, It’s real cool. We are working towards our Chief Scout Award along with the 11 other Scouts who joined.

James Theobald - ace knotter

Dean added, “The message soon spread around the nearby housing estate. Almost every week we have a newcomer who arrives to join the Troop. Yes, we do have ball games which they enjoy but we develop other skills such as tracking, cooking and pioneering that means they can survive in an unknown location if they need to. We run first aid courses and take them off for weekend camps where self reliance is the name of the game. The leaders get as much from all this as the Scouts.”

Dean has been with the Leighton Buzzard Scouts since he was a Cub at the age of eight. Now he wants to give back to the Scouts some of the excitement and commitment he had when he was a lad. And the Sunday Scouts keep on coming back for more.

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