Surrey’s Newest Queen’s Scouts Parade at Windsor Castle
Chief Scout Bear Grylls to present Scouts highest honour
On 24th April Chief Scout Bear Grylls will honour nearly 300 Scouts from all around the country with their Queen’s Scout awards. They will be presented with the award at Windsor Castle and joined by Scout Ambassadors Warwick Davis and Tim Peake, in front of family and friends in what is going to be a fantastic celebration of achievement.
The Queen’s Scout Award is the highest honour in Scouting and is awarded for outstanding personal achievement. This honour is achieved by young people aged between 16 and 25 who have completed a range of challenges, which includes service to their community, completing an expedition in wild country, undertaking a five-day residential project in a new environment, developing an existing talent or learning some new skills to build on what they have already learnt in the Scouts. These young people will have shown that they are dedicated and willing to learn all they can, which will provide them with opportunities to gain skills for life.
Chief Scout Bear Grylls said:
“Queen’s Scout award recipients are the absolute pinnacle of determination, grit and perseverance. They’ve contributed to their communities and developed skills along the way, and earning their Queen’s Scout awards is just another step in their journey to personal growth. These Scouts are an inspiration to all others around the world thanks to their hard work and I find myself full of admiration for every single one of them.”
Adam Horton, Bethany Williamson, Gemma Gosden, Jack Fidler, Jonathan Maud, Amy Gravatt, Lucy Gosden, Elloise Budd, Alex Long-Leather, Emma De Whalley, Tim Bouchard, Mikayla Davison, Maura Barber, Ben Bradley and Jakob Byrne-Jone all from Surrey are all part of nearly 300 new Queen’s Scouts receiving their award today.
A couple of them share what they have done to achieve the award:-
Adam from Leatherhead District said Community impact – Scout leader – did 2785 hours , also a Jamboree unit leader. Devised disability and LGBT awareness sessions that he ran at our group and at two other groups locally as an area people were struggling to deliver in the programme Expedition ON CRUTCHES! Peak District and Snowdonia. Four days hiking, just had a lighter bag but that was the only concession. His crutch broke at one point – but he had brought spare crutches!
Mikayala from Esher District As part of my award, I completed Gold DofE where we spent 4 nights sailing and rowing around Loch Lomond in a 60-year old traditional wooden gig. Whilst the trip itself was beautiful with glorious sunshine and a nice breeze, the measures we’d taken to waterproof the gig, involving a bow cover and padding out the centreboard, weren’t as effective as hoped and meant the last night involved scrounging around for a spare set of just about everything!
The rest of my award consisted of a trip to Tanzania where I volunteered at a school teaching children and building classrooms, participating in an environmental campaign whilst volunteering at a zoo, assessing the environmental impact at one of our own summer camps, collaborating with a Dutch scout group to coordinate and lead a variety of exercises to integrate our scouts and leading discussions within our scout group at camp to explore the scouting values.
The annual Windsor Castle event has been held since 1934 on the Sunday nearest to St. George’s Day (23rd April). St. George is the Patron Saint of Scouting. Since the Queen’s Scout Award began, over 100,000 of these awards have been presented to young men and women for outstanding personal achievements and service to their local communities. They have learnt new life skills and developed them into what will one day be useful for their careers. Scouting offers over 200 different activities varying from archery to kayaking with all of them being tailored to help young people develop skills for life in the most effective way possible.