Recently, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting with some of the 16^th Fleetwood Scouting Group and their amazing group leaders at the United Reform Church. They invited me along for a discussion as part of achieving their Youth Shape Award Badge, to add to their already huge individual collections of badges. The Youth Shape Award aims to help young people work with their leaders and local decision makers to learn life-long leadership skills.

Scouting groups and other youth groups really do reflect the best of our communities and offer children instrumental opportunities to learn, socialise and develop interests that could otherwise pass them by. My time as a Brownie and then a Brownie leader, before I was an MP, were some of the most exciting and memorable times of my life, especially the camping trips. I think that the confidence I discovered and experiences that I had as a Brownie played a massive role in leading me to where I am today. That is one of the many reasons why I will, and always have been, such an enthusiastic advocate for community youth groups.

During our discussions, one of the young Scouts, Jonathan read me a letter that the whole group had worked on. In this letter they explained that because of some flooding last year, most of their camping equipment got damaged, so they have compiled a wish-list of items that they would like, to organise more activities and trips in the future. They would like a USB Projector to have a visual aid for presentations when they have visitors (and movie nights on camping trips), litter picking equipment because they want to help keep the streets and the beach clean, hi-vis vests for safety on their trips out as well as any other general camping gear.

They have already arranged a sponsored walk that will be taking place in April, to raise funds for their wish-list items. However, after we did a bit of thinking we decided that it would be a great idea to appeal to all of you for donations. These children really want to help the community and they are very enthusiastic to commence regular litter picking sessions, so I believe that your generosity here would almost certainly be mutually beneficial. Some of you may have items on their wish-list that have been sitting at the back of your garage for years, if you do and think that you’d like to pass them on to our amazing local Beavers, Cubs and Scouts then please contact me at cat.smith.mp@parliament.uk or call my office on 01253 490440 and we can arrange getting any donations over to this lovely group!