As you may or may not be aware, I, Jonathan, am a long serving Scout Leader in Urmston in Greater Manchester.
In summer 2018, my son Robert, and I are participating in a 3 week Scouting expedition consisting of 31 Scouts and 9 adult Scout leaders to Malawi, South East Africa.
The expedition will include working with our partner charity Kasupe (www.kasupe.org.uk) on a 10 day community project. The exact details of the project(s) are currently being worked out with the Scouts themselves but could include things like building an extension on an existing school to create a pharmacy, building a bridge over a local river to enable children to get to the school during the rainy season, setting up a Scout group, the provision of a drinking water supply from a local bore hole.
The cost for each of us is £3000 –a significant part of which will be spent on materials required for the project. We hope to reduce this by a variety of fundraising activities including supermarket bag packs, coffee mornings, sponsored walks, quiz nights, race nights to name but a few.
This is a great opportunity for all those taking part : for the young people from across Greater Manchester Scouts it will be a life-changing experience; for the adult Scout leaders it will be an opportunity to lead an overseas project and support the Scouts and for the beneficiaries in Malawi, it will make a real difference to their lives and their whole village.