We should be brave and do what we have to do

The weekend of 19-20 March was very active for the Organisational Development team. From Madrid trough Paris to Brussels, 3 associations (ASDE – Spain, EEdF – France and SGV – Belgium) went through the global support assessment tool looking after the “weak spots” in the 10 dimension defined by the standard.

In Madrid (Spain) the ASDE – Federación de Asociaciones de Scouts de España had a productive and very useful assessment that provided the association with several advice’s and comments towards improvement of their performance.

The process opened quality discussions concerning the practices in governance, adults in scouting, youth program, continuous improvement and integrity management.

What we know that we have in practice is sometimes challenging to prove it with documents and this process provide us with opportunity to reconsider our practices, to look beyond from our understanding and to improve how we do the thinks our association. From accessing the good governance to how we tackle and identity crisis, the standard give us a chance to reflect on the strong and possibly weak areas of the ASDE.

This process is very important for us, and it’s not about how we score in the assessment. It’s about going deep in debating about all dimensions and find the best ideas and recommendation to improve our work.

A positive thing of the assessment is the way you reconsider your vision of your organisation in a more objective way, or even discovering new issues that you don’t even count with them. Is very helpful to have someone who looks you from outside and gives you a bigger point of view.

The assessment also give us new goals to work on, with new motivations and looking forward to start. Scouting is a movement, so if we don’t move forward, we don’t grow up and either improve our service to the society. We should be brave and do what we have to do to be in a continuous developing. We have to move on, looking always to the future.

written by: Alejandro Rescalvo,  Secretary of ASDE Scouts de Espana.

Through the Global Support Assessment Tool (GSAT), the European Scout Region is supporting National Scout Organisations (NSOs) and Associations (NSAs) in developing sustainable management structures.

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