Volunteer supporter opportunity for development

You may be aware that Scottish Headquarters has recently appointed a Local Development Officer in Clyde Region earlier this year and this will lead to the formation of a number of new Sections and Scout Groups in some of our more hard to reach communities.

They hope to exceed the targets set by the project and be able to offer Scouting to many more young people, which is great news. They are also hoping that there will be much learning from the projects so that they can replicate these successes in other parts of the country.

One previous success story that they are going to implement as part of the project is the use of Volunteer Supporters to provide added support to the newly formed Sections. This was used successfully in a project in Cornwall and essentially new Sections are provided with a Volunteer Supporter for a period of 20 weeks to help the new Section become established and the new leadership team take on full responsibility for running the section.

Volunteer Supporters will need to be carefully selected and they will receive remuneration of £1,000 for their services on a self-employed basis. As part of the YUF project in Scotland we have shaped this post to meet our particular circumstances and we are seeking initially a pool of 5 Volunteer Supporters in each of the two Regions and then the most appropriate and available will be selected to support each new Section.

The Volunteer Supporters will report to the Regional Representative on the Management Team and the District Commissioner who will be involved in the selection of the Supported Volunteer for the new Sections in your District.

This is a very new venture and I am convinced that the success of the Youth United Foundation (YUF) project depends on us getting appropriate people in this role to enable Nikki and Deirdre to continue their front role in development in the Regions. This approach may be only appropriate in this project or it may have a wider application in Scouting.

Please follow the link to the paperwork related to Supported Volunteers and if you or any of your Leaders are interested then please complete the paperwork and return it to Scottish Headquarters by Tuesday 5 May 2015.