Last month I spoke about the activities being organised across South East Scotland to support the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. One of the great things about these events has been the number of them which have been instigated or based on the ideas of young people within sections.
As Regional Commissioner, one of the priorities that I have set is to ensure that all major decisions within the Region include engagement with young people to help ensure that the support that we offer can best meet the needs of young people across our sections, groups and districts.
We have already ensured that interview panels for paid roles always include youth representation and I have now extended this to all Regional search committees for volunteer commissioner roles.
I have also tried to ensure that young people have the opportunity to feed into Regional decision making. The picture above shows a recent meeting that Mike Treanor, Deputy RC, and I had with Niamh and Ewan, Scout’s Scotland’s Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament, who have been elected by young people involved in Scouting across Scotland to represent them. We had a brilliant discussion where Niamh and Ewan provided feedback on the proposed future strategy for South East Scotland Region, how we can improve our youth involvement and also provided important input which will directly affect how Regional funds are spent in the coming year.
You can find out more about Niamh and Ewan’s work as MSYPs here.
Recognising the importance of this area, I am pleased to announce a new appointment to the Regional Leadership Team. Roux Hanna has been appointed as a Regional Adviser and their main focus will be on Youth Involvement, not just at Regional level but also supporting groups and districts and will also provide support to Melissa Meldrum in her role as Regional Adviser for Inclusion. Roux recently moved to Edinburgh as a student at Queen Margaret University but did most of their Scouting in and around Dundee and we are both really looking forward to working together with young people and volunteers across the Region to continue to ensure that Scouting in South East Scotland is shaped by young people.
Look out for more details on Roux’s exciting new role coming soon and we hope many of you will have the opportunity to meet them in person as they start to get around groups and sections.
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You have heard a lot in recent updates about the work that has been going on across the Region on our updated strategy and I am pleased to let you know that the final draft is awaiting approval by the Regional Executive Committee. I am really excited about the plans that we have and look forward to being able to share more details on this in the coming month
Yours in Scouting
Martin Elliot
Regional Commissioner
rc@sesscouts.org.uk
South East Scotland Scouts
71 Bonaly Road
Edinburgh
EH13 0PB
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