SVS - A Story of Adventure

What's it like being a Venture within our Unit?

Let's take a look at typical life cycle of a Sliema Venture Scout--- his name of course, is Malcolm.

Malcolm joined the Unit just after his O-level examinations in June. He spent the first couple of weeks getting accustomed to the way things are in the Unit, attending meetings, joining in on the games and activities and getting his kit together for his first field activity --- a navex. A navex is a navigation exercise normally held at night. During his first 2 months in the Unit he took part in three of these; he got lost very badly in one of them but still made it to the end point. After each navigation exercise, at around 0600, he had to participate in a medevac exercise along with his fellow recruits.

Malcolm had a lot of good buddys in his company of recruits, they were 8 in all and they helped each other out with preparing their kits and equipment for activities and practicing the basic skills like pioneering and how to lift casualties.

During July & August Malcolm attend a course of first aid with St John Ambulance and also took part in a 'Job month' activity which is basically a fundraising initiative in which he did odd jobs for his friends and family members in order to make some money for the Unit. (Some of this money was later spent on upgrading the abseiling equipment which the Unit uses).

During Summer he also joined the other ventures in painting the Unit Room- everything was turned to urban camoflauge. This was done as part of their commitment (an activity show that the ventures really are committed to the Venture Unit and the Group).

Wow that was quite alot for his first Summer in the Unit!!! but there was one more activity - Bootcamp! Malcolm and his company's bootcamp was a 4-5 day camp held in summer which was organised by the older venture scouts.

This camp was like a non-stop marathon of scouting. He slept very little and did very very much. Apart from practicing the skills he hard learnt throughout his first summer like actually using rescue knots and building a ballista out of pioneering poles he also got to try out abseiling, rock climbing, caving, archery, canoeing and rafting. He also bonded even more with the other Unit members, the older ventures were very supportive and helped them to tackle the various challenges and difficult activities while his fellow recruits formed a strong team that never gave up!

On the last night of camp they all sat around a bbq eating and singing. The next day was the day they had all been waiting for ... the day of the GRADEX. Gradex is short for graduation exercise and is the last activity before they are recognised as full members of the Unit.

This activity involves a (approx) 23km day navigation exercise with incident points after which Malcolm was given time to build a bivvy, cook a meal, eat and sleep. At around 2300 he was awoken for the second part- a night navex. This was (approx) 16km and at the finish point the team had to complete a medevac.

He had never felt this tired in his life but when he finished the Gradex he knew that he had done some thing great.

The following week the company was invested in the Sliema Unit and they were all very proud at what they had accomplished.

September followed and this brought resits and school. Malcolm knew there was no way the Unit could keep up such a high rate of activities during school time !

Tune in shortly for the next part of the story

Mo$es