Andy Moore - County Commissioner
To all Members of Don District, I would like to thank you for your support in 2008 and for your kind invitations to events in your district.  I hope you and your families have a good Christmas and New Year and I look forward to joining you all in 2009 to continue to work together in the Scouting family.
Merry Christmas
Andy

Jim Carroll - District Commissioner
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Jim

Sylvia West - ADC Beavers   
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the leaders for all their help and support in running the Beaver Section, and for the support they have given on District events.
Hope you too had a good year and are now looking forward to Scouting 2009 and what it brings.
Thanks again
Sylvia

Andrew Papka - ADC Cubs
Very best wishes to everyone for Christmas and the New Year.                                           
If you have in any way been involved with the Cub Scouts in Don District, then my thanks to you.                                           
If you are Cub Scout in Don District, then my thanks to you and I hope you will enjoy your Cubbing in 2009.                                           
Andrew 

Kit Levesley - DESC (Explorers)
To all members of Don District – especially those pesky Explorer Scouts and Leaders!
Thank you for making 2008 one of the best years ever for Explorer Scouting in Don District - and we’re planning for 2009 to be even better.
This year we’ve had nearly 500 nights away between us, had the chance to go on 10 different camps, and taken part in activities as diverse as swimming, body boarding, hiking, kite flying, sea kayaking and coasteering. We’ve had experiences that we’ll remember forever, and touched the lives of more people than just our own members.
Wishing all of Don District a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Kit 

Peter Blakemore - ADC Fellowship
As we are reminded when we say Christmas has come quickly that its on the 25th of December this year and that it will be the same next year so put it in your diaries now, and if you have not booked the day off scouting this year you should do that next and you can take off half a day on the 26th as well. seriously folks I would like to thank you all for the work and the enjoyment shared in 2008 with both all the younger members and those who still think they are young in mind if not in body. I would like to thank all the fellowship for the hard work they have put in as this is mostly behind the scenes. We in the fellowship and I would like to wish you all and Merry Christmas  (that is merry not drunk) and a fabulous new year 2009. The fellowship try to help when able and many have other jobs in scouting they are also short of time but they can't help if you don't ask with as much notice as possible see you all in the New Year  Blessings of Christmas to you All  
Peter

And

A thank you to all the Districts Scout Leaders who in the absence of a District Team for Scouts mucked in together and kept the District extremely active with competitions, camps, badge achievement and most importantly loads of fun for the Scouts whilst doing this and learning so much at the same time. Merry Christmas to them all and they've already planned an equally busy and fun 2009, so Happy New Year.                                      

 

A Scout Christmas Disco was held at the 82nd HQ, not a flare in sight, but 50ish Scouts from the 32nd, 33rd, 61st, 76th & 82nd donned their glad rags and Leaders from 61st donned their Barn Dancing Kit (no District Explorer Leader pun intended), ah well they had fun, "so whatever, am we bovered". DJ's 'Slim Boy Fat' & 'Princess Disco Dom' worked through the favourite dance and sing along tracks of the decades and after the first half hour of compulsory no dancing seen at all discos around the World, the Scouts packed the dance floor, danced and bopped the night away and until the amp blew a fuse 10 seconds from the end of the last track the boo's indicated what a brilliant and fun dance night this had been.

A request has already been made by a Scout for another at Easter, we'll see!

The Centenary Celebrations carried on with the long awaited (venue booking problems) Don District Leaders Barn Dance held at the Niagra Police Sports & Social Club. Only in Scouting could a Barn Dance be musically catered for by a Celidh Band, so a mixture of checked shirts and cowboy hats yee ha'd their night away to good old Irish Country Music, so the sound of "grab your partner by the toe, swing them round and let them go, to be sure to be sure to be sure" could be heard throughout the night.

Then the aroma of pie and peas wafted across the dance floor and Kit abandoned his dancng partner and ran in a blur of red checker to be the 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the queue. Luckily there were plenty of pie and peas left for the rest of us too and more helpings for Kit later.

Back to more dancing with most people taking part whilst our DC Jim looked on, ending the night with people dancing to their cars humming and singing "I'm a Blarney Stone Cowboy"

Thanks to the District Team for another thoroughly enjoyable night.

Cub Scout Athletes badge testing...
Don District Athletics Badge Testing Day was held on 2nd November 2008 at the English Institute of Sport, Coleridge Road, Attercliffe.
The Cubs had to reach a standard in each of the following: 50m sprint; 50m skipping; long jump; high jump; sergeant jump; shuttle run; cricket ball throwing; 1000m run.
All the cubs were extremely well behaved and in definitely ‘did their best’.
25 cubs from 4 packs took part and all but 4 gained their Athletes badge on the day. The other 4 were later retested by their Cub Leaders and reached the standard required to get the badge.
Once again, thanks to the staff at English Institute of Sport for the use of their superb facility.
Thanks also to the band of leaders and some parents who looked after the bases.
Biggest thanks of all to Andy Scully of the 61st for organising the afternoon.
Unfortunately this was another activity not very well supported despite my earlier plea.

Monopoly is an easy game to understand, go around the board and buy up the spaces usually disguised as a Top Hat or dog. The Don District version was on a much bigger scale! Teams from groups in the district had to travel around the city centre getting photos of themselves taken outside famous buildings and landmarks. Easy ? Well not quite! They only had 2 hours in which to get to all the spaces on our special Scoutopoly Board. Added to this the scouts could be sent to jail by our 'jailors' cunningly disguised as explorer scouts. Scouters also wandered around handing out extra cash.

After a briefing in the Winter Gardens the teams set off and all too soon they were back. With the threat of money deducted for late return, all the teams managed to get back on time. Leaders then booked in the teams and totted up the money gained. The weather held although one or two leaders seemed to need loads of coffee to keep warm

The winners were the 25th Ecclesfield, second were the 82nd Chapeltown and third were the 32nd Stocksbridge.

It's nice to see new and different winners of the trophies and so it was Ecclesfield who went away with the inaugral Monopoly Run Trophy. No one appeared dressed as a dog but there were some funny looking hats on display! Next year we hope to expand this to cover a larger area.