Introduction

Many of you will know Luke Cohen, who spent several years organising District Communications, stepped down during last year. I’m Morgan Fuller and had started to support Luke with District IT matters and have now taken on the role of Team Leader of Lewisham’s newly formed Communications and IT Team. Currently it’s a small team of myself, Al Gray and Simon McCarthy, and as the saying goes many hands make light work, so if you think you can lend a hand in any way, take a look at some of the ways you can get involved further on.

Purpose

The Communications and IT Team has a wide scope, but as we’re starting off, we have two key priorities:

  • Improve communication between the members of the District. The many methods of communication out there can mean events, news and updates aren’t getting out to everyone.
  • Support and expand the use of our IT services for the various District Teams. Setting up all members of a District team, such as the Trustee Board or the Programme Team with a District email address and Microsoft 365 account. Allowing collaboration via MS Teams and online storage for sharing files.

Update your details

All volunteers in the District need to ensure their contact details are up to date on the HQ membership system, login below.

Scouts.org.uk Membership Login

Update your Groups/Units details

Details for your Scout Group or Explorer Unit are available to the public in three places, it is the responsibility of Group/Unit representatives to ensure your details are kept up to date:

  • The National Website: Using the HQ membership system, login link above, and depending on your role in the Group/Unit, you can update either your Section/Group/Units details. Learn how to update the details here. Please note Explorer units aren’t showing on the finder, HQ is aware and are working to resolve.
  • The South London County Website: See Managing your page on the County website for details on updating.
  • The Lewisham District Website: We can copy the details as listed in the HQ membership system, but you need to tell us when there has been a change. Currently please use this form to let us know.

Plans for future communications

Previously email updates, event notifications etc. didn’t go out as well as they should have. This due to a limited number of people with the ability to send emails via Compass to all members, and other mailing methods not having all the necessary contacts included. Often those wanting to get out information were left using Facebook or WhatsApp, but not everyone uses those platforms.

Email is still considered the principle contact method to get information out to everyone, but there are still limitations on who can send emails, as well as how much content could be included. We will send to the email addresses recorded in the HQ membership system, so please ensure yours is current, see above.

The intention is for updates, newsletters, and event information to be posted here on the District website. Then a brief email, WhatsApp message or Facebook post can be sent out with a link directing you to the website.

Updates and additions are needed for the website, mainly changes to contact forms, so that you can get in touch with members of the various District teams, or event organisers. As best practice is to avoid listing email addresses that can be picked up by spammers.

We are all volunteers, so it will take some time to reach a polished result.

Future updates & newsletters

As we improve our communications and our website functionality, we will send out further updates, aiming to keep them bitesize and on a single item.

We also want to reinstate our newsletter The Lewisham Scouter as a regular post on the website. Sharing good news stories and advertising upcoming activities etc.

Get involved

If you’re interested in getting involved with the Communications and IT Team get in touch here.

A few areas we’re looking for further support in are:

  • Newsletter Editors: Restarting the newsletter, collecting stories and publishing editions.
  • Webmasters: Helping to maintaining the website, updating pages, publishing event information and other details. We use WordPress.
  • System Administrators: Helping to maintaining our Microsoft 365 services, creating accounts and email addresses for District team members, and support for technical issues.

Big or small, practical or theoretical, any input is welcome.

Thanks for reading.

Published 10th February 2025