Doing things that people like requires people that like that sort of thing to run them. With the increasing need to be ‘qualified’ if you lose the qualified people from the squadron and you lose a popular activity, what then?
But is this a popularity contest? I cannot think of one thing, other than an informal social night that fully engages all cadets and staff. I tried the “what do you like/want to do” with cadets several times and found little common ground.
Perm three from seven, excluding me, I say exclude me as even if I’m planned in, who knows what is coming through the door that night to distract the CO.
But regardless of how many are they interested in what is planned if it’s not their thing or they aren’t ‘qualified’ to do it?
We’ve just had the next three months of programme finalised after getting people to say what they can or cannot make in terms of parade nights, although the people I have who work in shops are and will be a little less definite.
Have you tried running multiple different activities simultaneously on a parade night? With each member of staff doing a different activity the cadets get a little choice and it keeps the staff on their toes.
You may be doing this already, but i thought I would suggest it, it seems to work at my Sqn.
Thanks, done that for years on as flights / sub-flights, but it’s not a matter of them choosing what they want to do or not.
Given the staff’s “abilities”/attendance we’ll do a mixture of things like comms, fms, DofE, FA refresh, leadership and on some nights one of these but on a round-robin basis with 3 20-25 minute sessions on a specific aspect. The round robin seems to be the best format.
What this means is that people are attending on the nights that they are responsible for the activity. What they do outside of that, while attendance would be appreciated, it’s not required as long they let all of us know.
I don’t turn up every night which has annoyed my Wing Staff a couple of times, but it is only a hobby