Hounslow & Twickenham Woodcraft Folk

September has come round again and we're looking forward to another year of fun activities. We have six new Eflins starting this evening. What a great start to the new year!

And on Friday our new Venturer group are off to Cudham, our Woodcraft centre in Kent, for a weekend with other Venturers from around London. The programme for the weekend includes

• ·Friday craft and social evening

• Saturday local walk and campfire evening

• Sunday bushcraft session

They're going to have a great time and we look forward to hearing about it next week.

With minds focussed on the terrible events happening in the Middle East, our Pioneers and Venturers have been focussing on peace this term. This coincided with two arms fairs at Twickenham Rugby Ground.

The programme for our Pioneers and Venturers included discussing international conflict, giving new words to well-known Woodcraft songs around the theme of peace, and making a peace banner.

Last week they held their own peace march to the rugby ground and sang their peace songs outside the main entrance.

Woodcraft Folk's recent statement on the continued and escalating violence in Palestine can be read here.

We began the new year yesterday evening with a meeting for all leaders, volunteers and parents.

We have a great year ahead! There were some changes in leadership - Lewis stood down as District Coordinator after steering the district through some challenging times, the Covid pandemic for example. His place has been taken by Cornelia, who was our Elfin leader for many years. And to complete our strong leadership team John remains as Membership Secretary and Treasurer; Ian is looking after Health & Safety and Safeguarding; Cris, Anna and Thea will be responsible for resources and equipment; our Elfin group will be lead by Thea, Lewis, Emily and Anna and our Pioneers and Venturers by Kate, Ruairidh and Ian. We also set up an outreach and marketing team that will be led by Shushanah, Mia, Cris and Lewis. Kate, Emily and Lewis are our First Aiders.

We will also be joined by three Duke of Edinburgh  volunteers - Sefi, Olivia and Hannah (who was one of our Elfins). They will be helping with the Elfin group as well as applying their youthful social media skills to help the marketing team.

We have a full programme of exciting activities planned for the term and camps/weekend trips booked for October, December, February, May and July. We're looking forward to another amazing year.