Booming Scouting in New Neighbourhood – Scout Home for Zelenec

Project Description

Our Scout Group ZaZemi Zapy a Zelenec has been a traditionally a small-sized Group located at Zapy – the village of population of about 800 citizens North-East of Prague, with the history coming back to 1936 and the renewal after the Velvet Revolution in 1993. It’s quite rare that the independent scout group is long-term operating at a village of this size and not a town.

In the modern history of the Group the number of members has been ranging between 30 and 50 and scout leaders had to face a lot of difficulties, being it a lack of qualified team for some time, unstable support from local municipality or problems with reaching the children in a place with no local school. Scouts had to move to another building within the municipality several times and overall cumulated disadvantages of the location led to thoughts of ending the activity after 2010.

Therefore 7 years ago the fresh wind into the life of the Scout Group’s Team brought an unexpected idea to expand its activities to another location – nearby village of Zelenec (CZ-250 91), 3000+ inhabitants’ municipality in the eastern suburbs of Prague. It was a good match – massive booming of the neighborhood generated a lot of families with small children and active parents and the reaction of the municipal council and the mayor on Scouting was heavily positive, too. Gradually three large Cub Patrols and a Scout Troop have grown during last 7 years and 50+ new scouts have joint us, while the activity in the former village is still going on. Starting in a borrowed school classroom at first, we have overcome problems with a suitable space for Scout meetings since then. We’ve been moved into two other places serving as a Scout Clubhouse over the years, but in 2021 we finally got a long-term free rental of an old abundant building for a Scout Clubhouse from the municipality. In return we have to make the basic reconstruction and equipping of the Clubhouse by ourselves in order to create a cozy, inspiring and attractive small Scouting world for our children.

As the war in Ukraine escalates and more and more refugees come to find safety in Czechia, we also expect the number of refugee children in Zelenec – as a locality close to the capital – to grow. Making the Clubhouse a more welcoming place would help us open out Troops for these children more, helping them to be included in the community more. After all ‘ZaZemi’ in our Group’s name means nothing less but a base, background or a supportive environment for all of our Scouts. That’s what we want to be reflected not only in our program itself, but also in the very home of that program.

The project will consist of 3 main Activities:

1. Reconstruction of the Scout Clubhouse – Improvement of conditions of the Scout House – during 2-3 voluntary workdays on weekends for scouts, leaders and parents. Joint work on the Scout Clubhouse reconstruction will be combined with interesting games or other small Scouts’ activities energizing and uniting the whole team – Scope of works needed: cleaning of rooms, minor repairs, wall painting – New equipment needed: washbasin, carpet, storage racks, new kitchen unit, shelves, pelmets, wall of notice boards for Patrols
2. Earth Day – 22/04/2022 – Program for all Scouts, parents and public in the Zelenec’s Scout Clubhouse – Ecological education basics, Earth’s development lecture – by PhD student at Faculty of Natural Sciences and a member of our Team Ms. Veronika Veselá – Workshops for participants: dumpster diving, insect hotels, water filters – catastrophic film screening (The Day After) with debate with the Scouts
3. Gardening Voluntary Day – preliminarily Saturday 07/05/2022 – voluntary work in the garden for Scouts with activities and games – neighborhood meeting – exchange and bazaar of flower and vegetable seedlings.

Expenses:

1. material for minor repairs of the clubhouse, painting, etc. – 500 €
2. Personal protection equipment – 250 €
3. Tools – 250 €
4. New equipment: washbasin, carpet, storage racks, new kitchen unit, shelves, pelmets, wall of notice boards for Patrols – 3.000 €
5. Earth Day costs – food, equipment etc. – 500 €
6. Gardening Voluntary Day costs – food, equipment etc. – 500 €

Total: 5.000 €

Own sources: Own resources / reserves of Scout Group – 500 €

Support required from FOSE: 4 500 €