I spent yesterday evening in the company of about fifty of The Scout Association’s young national and county representatives, during their annual conference at Warwick University. They were very kind, listening to a few of my stories, laughing at my jokes and reacting politely to my various challenges to them to transform the Movement. After…
To Brockley today to speak at a lunchtime meeting of the Greenwich, Lewisham and Bexley Chamber of Commerce. Lovely people and loads of interest in the work of the Career Academy Foundation. But the meeting was more noteable for its location than my speech. It was held at the legendary Rivoli Ballroom. Stepping out of…
Today Sneeze died. She was one of my mum’s two terriers. She was a smashing little dog with bags of character. Even my father, a man who really didn’t like small dogs, grew to love her in the years before he died. One day, Sneeze went missing in the village. Dad, distraught, went out to…
This morning I did my normal Sunday morning circuit three times and it took me four hours. I’ve just checked the mileage and this means that this morning I ran just over 22 miles. 5 training gels and two litres of water left me feeling exhausted and a bit dehydrated, but a trip to Sainsburys…
Today is the UK Career Academy Foundation’s fifth birthday. The day started with a presentation to business representatives at Newham College with Stephen Timms MP (with a brilliant roleplay perfromed by Career Academy students) and ended with a piece of birthday cake at our staff meeting in Canary Wharf. And yesterday was our youngest member…
I returned home from Delhi at 7:00am and immediately traveled on to Gilwell Park to help with the organisation of the second Heads of Contingent meeting for the World Scout Jamboree. Over 60 countries represented from all over the world and over 150 delegates. We provided them with logistical information about the Jamboree, took them…
One of our group, Andrew Linfoot from Australia, is managing a web archive of all the photos we’ve taken on the visit. Access this by visiting http://picasaweb.google.com/andrew.linfoot .
We used the analogy of fireflies in the dark as the basis of our presentation, describing each of the community entrepreneurs that we met as a different firefly. Each member of the team presented and we used video footage as well as photographs to illustrate what we’d seen. We ended the presentation with a poem…
The week of travelling all over the north of India is now over and we’re now working on our fifteen minute presentation which we give either tomorrow or the day after to the Princess Royal and the rest of the conference. Our group has seen a lot. Reforestation of mining areas, the installation of electricity…
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.” I learned Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening,’ for a declamation competition at school when I was ten years old. (I can’t remember if I won or…
