Parent's Briefing about our Camp

Much more hair but you get the gist!

This could be a short blog entry because all parents came and attended the meeting!

That alone is enough to make anybody in the camp planning team happy.

So how unprepared was I the "leader in charge" when it came to this?

A Lot! Fact is I decided against producing a parent's pack because during the past few months a lot of literature and communication was produced and distributed, so everybody had all the info they needed to know and hold to, right?

Well... Wrong!

Unfortunately there is nothing better than a hard copy of the program (timetable), the menu, the rules and the other areas covered in the presentation.

People receive emails and they do read them but do they keep them? you don't know if they do!

Going paperless is great but when we physically meet, we need physical evidence of our communication too! It's not bad to cover all angles of communication either.

During our scouting year we use many forms of communication:

• email - direct, targeted, informal 
• website - open and accessible 
• newsletter - concise, distributed 
• "next event" letter - by proxy (scout), distributed, short 
• presentation - direct, personal, interactive 
• handout - functional, impersonal, completed 
• a chat - direct, informal, personalised 

I'm sure there is a more scientific list of ways of communication and their attributes somewhere but it makes the point that we use many different ways to talk to the parents, directly, indirectly, by proxy (the scouts) etc.

So to understand the strengths of each and maintain 2 or 3 channels of communication is not wasteful, is necessary and we do it already.

So back to No hand outs for the Parents; at least I had a list of items to cover.
Well, yes but I didn't compile the list for the presentation, I just had the one for my planning, I knew it well, it was ticked, it invoked statements and answers just by looking at it!

It worked out OK but I am also good at ad-libing, most of the times... I should do myself a favour and make a proper outline of my presentation, with points to cover to know I covered them.

I know I covered them but I struggled a bit. What should have been a 15 minute presentation, it was in fact close to 30 minutes of me talking about 4-5 subjects, one or two prompted by my GSL.

It went well, but it could be easier!

Best part was when we presented to the parents the Code of Conduct, the rules discussed and written by our scouts, their sons and daughters.

I read, "Always keep your clothes tidy and folded in tents!" and then I said, "Daniel suggested that, I think...", to which his mother exclaimed, "Really!?"

Yes we were all impressed!