| Queen's Badge | Leadership Course |
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On 23rd January 2009, the five seniors, me, Jim Walker, Chris Burrows, Phil Wright and Joe Dixon, went on our first ever Queen's Badge course at Kirkham which was set up to introduce us to the Queen's Badge and to develop our Leadership skills. The weekend involved many activities which would help us to gather ideas for what we would need to help lead parts of the Company.
We arrived in the early evening of Friday 23rd January where we were introduced to the staff and lads from the other companies. Having not had a great experience in the past with lads from other companies, we were pleasantly surprised about how nice all the lads we met were and we all settled in very quickly.
For the weekend, we were split into different groups and mixing with lads from other companies. I was in a group with Jim and then from the other companies Ian, Jack and Chris; we all seemed to get on very well. We then all spent the rest of the evening chilling out and some people went to play football while others stayed in the dormitories to chat and hang out. There was also a tuck shop for boys to buy from.
Saturday was packed with the main activities of the weekend to help us with leadership within Boys' Brigade. From playing Football yesterday, my foot felt really uneasy but I continued with the first activity which involved going to different parts of the room to show what we thought of the different styles of leadership which were Autocratic, Beaurocratic, Democratic, Charismatic and the idea of Lassez-Faire. it was interesting to debate which styles of leadership would be apporiate for which situation.
The next part of the day was a hike which I was devestated not to go on because the pain in my foot got so bad that I could hardly walk on it. The Hike though involved the groups we had been put into to follow a route and along the way solve puzzles relating to leadership. Feedback from the group showed it was a fun afternoon walking and doing the puzzles.
The rest of the day was spent organising our parts for tomorrow's service which for my group involved writing prayers and for others involved lecturing, reading from the Bible and putting on a Drama production. The groups also had a chance to show their presentations we had to prepare before hand; despite the lack of preparation, groups performed quite well and gained valuable feedback from leaders on what could be done to improve leadership.
We also spent some time having fun by looking into the different physical activities you could do with younger members by designing games and even having a go at some arts and crafts which we all found quite funny.
The end of the day involved a lecture on connecting Christianity with Leadership which was entertaining as there was lots of messy faces from eating various foods and lads putting their faces into cream and chocolate to find various items. Again another valuable activitiy which helped us to learn more about how we can fit our leadership more into what Boys' Brigade is all about. I was also surprised by how helpful everyone was about my sore foot as it got progressively worse over the course of the weekend.
Sunday involved the church service where my group read out our prayers and was a good chance to reflect on God and discuss issues going on in the world at the present moment. It was a very pleasant service which I found most enjpyable. The afternoon was spent doing another group activity which was to solve a range of puzzles to find out a final answer. The task was incredibly difficult and our group particulary struggled with the tasks set. Despite what we had to do, the groups did very well and gave it their best shot in a task which easily took up the whole afternoon.
At the end we said final prayers and got to shake everyone's hand. Personally I found the course very fulfilling in my understanding about leadership and really pointed out to me the importance of the Queen's Badge. I feel that this course was a good step on the path towards the Queen's Badge and we hope that all the lads can hopefully go on to achieve highly to gain one of the top awards in the Boys' Brigade. As well as being fulfilling, the weekend was very enjoyable as we all felt we got on very well and worked well together as a team and found it a great way to spend a weekend.
Ryan Mellor