By Danielle Kutchel
Four Venturers from 1st Casey Scout Group have received one of the highest honours a young scout can attain.
Sharlotte Dickinson, Adam Marshall, Lauren Symmons and Aaron Boutcher have achieved the Queen’s Scout Award, the highest award a Venturer can receive in the section.
They’re four of only 96 venturers who received the award in 2020, and the first for the unit itself.
To add to the prestige, the Akoonah Venturers unit, as it is known, has only been running for three years.
The Venturers received their Queen’s Scout Award at a special ceremony on Sunday 31 January, surrounded by fellow scouts, family and friends.
Scout leaders past and present paid tribute to the hard work of the award recipients and shared stories of the obstacles they had overcome to reach this moment.
The Queen’s Scout Award is highly prestigious and revered within scouting – but it’s not easy to attain.
To gain the Queen’s Scout Award Venturers must first reach Venturer Award standard in all 13 Venturer Award activities.
Then, they must reach Queen’s Scout Award standard in an activity area from each of the categories of Leadership Development, Outdoors Activities, Personal Growth and Community Involvement.
It takes a minimum of 300 hours to complete, and scouts have only a three year window in which to get it done if they start from the age of 15.
For those who began the award late, like Sharlotte Dickinson, there’s a fair bit of work to catch up on.
The Venturer said she “was not really into the whole badgework scheme” when she first joined Venturers, but found her motivation as time when on.
Completing the award in 2020 while she balanced year 12 was tricky, especially as Sharlotte also stepped up to manage online scout meetings too.
But ultimately, it was a rewarding experience.
“This is probably one of the biggest things I’ve achieved so far. I didn’t think I’d be on this level but being here now, it’s definitely rewarding,” she said.
Fellow Venturer Adam Marshall is carrying on a family legacy by reaching the Queen’s Scout Award; his father, grandfather and uncle all also attained it in their own time.
He said he’d found an inner strength thanks to the work required to achieve the honour.
“It shows you can push through, (I know) I’ve got the strength to do this and other things in future,” he said.
Venturer Lauren Symmons said having a community around her helped her to continue her scouting journey.
She began scouting thanks to the influence of a family friend and her parents, all of whom were also scouts.
Completing the Queen’s Scout Award saw her develop a love of hiking, a pastime she wants to continue with.
Aaron Boutcher, the fourth of the Venturers to receive the award, also enjoyed the outdoor aspect of it.
The Covid lockdown impacted him less than other Venturers, as he had already completed the outdoor component of the Award before the shutdown.
He said the award is special because of its flexibility – “so every single person’s journey is going to be pretty different”.
Rhonda Marshall, scout (venturer) leader at 1st Casey Scout Group, praised the “huge effort” of the four award recipients.
“To complete this award in a year of Covid, whilst doing VCE subjects and mainly online, is a huge achievement in itself,” she said.
“I think it gives these four the confidence they needed to realise that anything is possible if you put in the hard yards and put your mind to it.”
