Programmes: Beavers : Explorers

Welcome back to 2nd Bracknell Foxes
We're pleased to announce that our new Cub pack, Foxes, will open this term. It is based at Crown Wood school and will meet on a Thursday evening from 4.30 to 5.45 (before the Bisons Beaver Scout meeting). It's nice to see the name back in use - we had a Foxes pack, run by Mang and Jacala, until it closed with low numbers in the summer of 1999.

Bag packing
We've arranged to pack bags at Sainsbury's Bagshot Road store on Saturday 11 May. This will be a group event and more details, including a chance to book your slot, will be sent out by your leaders.

Active Kids vouchers
We're collecting Active Kids vouchers. Get one for every £10 spent at Sainsbury's until 22 May.

District Parent & Child Camp : 20-22 September
The District are holding their annual parent & child camp at Earleywood in September and 2nd Bracknell Scout Group are looking to attend this year. The theme is “British Traditions & Cultures”. Camp fees are £10 per head, plus we need to provide our own food & beverages which will cost approximately £10 per head (subject to final menu and numbers attending). If you are interested in attending this camp can you please complete the reply slip and hand it to your leader with your camp fee payments of £10 per head. The clsing date for replies is Friday 17th May 2013. We will confirm separately details once all replies have been received.

Changes to 2nd Bracknell's website
After 11 years of faithful service we plan to retire this website during the summer. During the next few months we'll be thinning out some of the older content as we decide what information is still required. Now that the group uses the OSM software, most of the communication with parents and our members is via e-mail and as a result the usefulness of the section pages on this site has dropped off, e.g. no Spring term programmes except Beavers this year. We'll be launching a new 2nd Bracknell website that takes content automatically from OSM - meaning that the leaders only need to update things in one place. We'll keep you posted as the new site develops.

Thank you
We have been fortunate to have received some significant donations recently and are very grateful for the support from the wider community:

• ‘3’ (the telecoms company) have given us a donation of £500. This was through their Community Fund 12 Days of Christmas where 12 employees nominated a charity so thanks for thinking of us.

• Warfield Parish Council have awarded us a grant of £1000 towards new climbing equipment for the Group

Minibus
We are pleased that Cambridge Coachworks have very kindly agreed to service Barry’s Bus free of charge. Their support is much appreciated as we can use the money saved to help provide a fuller range of activities for our young people.

Don't forget us when you are shopping for a bargain
Do you frequently shop online for groceries, gifts, books, clothes, toys, holidays, hotels, mobile phone contracts, insurance, or just order a Pizza or rent a movie on a Friday night? If so, you can now earn a commission for us when you shop online with 2000 retailers from the convenience of your own home at no extra cost to you.
In order to earn us commission with your online shopping, simply click through to a retailer’s website from our Easyfundraising page, http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/2ndbracknellscouts. You'll see a page which tells you how much commission you can earn and any voucher or discount codes that are available. After that, you browse and shop as usual. If you make a purchase, commission is generated and given back to us. Remember that it can sometimes take a few days for the commission to show in our shop. If you download the Find & Remind toolbar it will show you how much you have raised and also remind you to claim your commission when you visit a participating site.

2nd Bracknell Active Support
In line with national policy, our Fellowship has now been re-branded as Scout Active Support. Details of our future events are included in the group diary with instructions on how to reserve a place on our Active Support page.

Barry's bus
Barry Smith was Akela at 2nd Bracknell for over 30 years. You can see our tribute to him online and him in action via our Past Events page. When he died in 2005 he left the group some money which we used to buy a minibus. Barry's programme was always full of trips out with small groups to the seaside and museums so we think he'd approve. We've now changed our minibus but kept the link with Barry by calling it "Barry's Bus II". If our group isn't already using it we are happy to hire our minibus to other local Scout or Guide groups. For more information please complete our enquiry form.

Thanks to around 75% of the group that have registered their Subs payments for Gift Aid we claimed £1751 in 20011/12. It's easy money for us so if you haven't registered for Gift Aid please see the Gift Aid e-note. For more information or to check whether you have already registered please contact our Treasurer. If you are supporting our Easyfundraising then don't forget to tick the Gift Aid box in your account settings. That way, all the commission that you earn us will count as a Gift Aid donation, worth 25% more.