BROCKS EXPLORER SCOUT UNIT

One-off costs.

 

The main uniform item we ask everyone to have is the shirt. Officially there are uniform trousers but dark blue “Craghopper” trousers are also virtually indistinguishable from the official article, they’re ok for ordinary wear, and can often be found significantly cheaper in Cotswold, Go Outdoors, etc. (but you didn’t read that here). For many occasions the uniform shirt worn with grey or black school type trousers or skirt is fine.

See the Suppliers list in the Useful addresses page of this website for local suppliers,  

If we do a lot of activities or something particularly expensive the cost might increase to £250, but it’s still a lot cheaper than the commercial equivalent. A weekend event away might be in the order of £60, an evening out locally £5-10, whilst an evening in the HQ doesn't cost anything.

We do some fundraising to add to our income from subscriptions and this also helps when we’re looking for grants and other sources of income which often require matched funding.

Sounds cool, what next?

At the moment - March 2019 - we have 20 Explorers and so we’re comfortably below the capacity of 28-30 which the leaders and the Explorers together have decided is the maximum size we want to be. Any larger and we have problems with transport when we go out, and also with activity centres and instructors who are geared to the average school class size of 25-30. We also know from the experience of other Units that when a Unit gets very large it can start to fragment itself into smaller sub-Units and we don’t want to lose the the close-knit and friendly Unit that we’ve been ever since we started.

We’re currently looking to have more people join us,  so contact one of the leaders if you know them, or email Webmaster@Brocks-explorers.org.uk and we’ll get back to you.  As a first move we suggest that you come along for a few weeks to see if you like what's going on and how you get on with the rest of the Unit. If you think it's going to work for you then join us, if not we’ll shake hands and part friends.

Please don't be shy if you don't know anyone in the Unit, or can’t persuade a friend to come with you. Several of our Explorers walked in “cold”, for example because they’d just moved to the area, and they’ve not regretted it. One characteristic that we’ve had from the start in 2002 is that we’re a friendly Unit and if you’re interested in doing the sort of things we do that’s a good starting point.

Other one-off costs are mostly related to activities and events, etc that we do. We try to keep the costs of these to a minimum by using Scouting “in-house” resources where possible and negotiating group discounts elsewhere. We realise that neither Explorers or their parents have bottomless pockets, so we try to space out the more expensive events across the calendar, and fill in between with lower or no-cost activities, particularly those social ones which are essential to an Explorer Unit but don't have to cost the earth.

Costs of activities will often be significantly less than a school or commercial company would charge. For example we’ve run our annual camp for several years in various places around the UK, for around the £200 mark all-inclusive - transport, activities for 7 days, and full board of course.....in a tent in a field though! A commercial provider would be about 2-3 times this cost for a comparable week.