Tell us about your story and the impact you have made on the Jersey community:
The Scout Centre has been open for over 20 years.
During this time The Jersey Scout Centre has become a valuable resource for many Schools and youth groups here in Jersey. We also provide accessible, affordable accommodation for both UK and European youth organisations to visit and learn about our island. We work very closely with local schools to enable their pupils to enjoy and learn about our unique environment in the coastal national park and enable many of them to experience their first night away from home, helping to build confidence and broaden their horizons.
We also work with the youth service, the Princes Trust and the army and navy cadet forces. They are regular visitors to our camp site. Many Secondary Schools run The DofE award scheme, and we work closely with them to provide safe camping space during expeditions, sometimes for over 100 participants. Several, Church based youth organisations also make use of our facilities to provide a getaway for the young people in their Parish.
We see many teachers, arriving with their pupils, who relay fond memories of their own trips to the Scout Centre, when they were in primary school themselves.
What activities does your organisation undertake that uses electricity and what is your annual consumption?
We use electricity for all our lighting and refrigeration needs. We pay our bills by direct debit, which is currently £129.00 per month.
Tell us the reason behind your application. Why you should be selected for the giveaway and how it aligns with your values and activities:
We wish to help our members to become responsible citizens and members of their local, national and international communities. Part of this is environmental awareness. We are planning to move to electricity for our heating and cooking in the future. These plans are expensive but when they are achieved, will make a considerable reduction in our environmental impact. They will however cause a significant increase in our electricity consumption. Solar panels will reduce the financial impact of that increase but will also be a very visible reminder to all our young people that we all need to be aware of environmental issues and all do as much as we can to reduce our environmental impact. Additionally, as a charity, any way we can offset increasing costs of utilities will enable us to use the saving in either improving the Scout Centre experience, or keeping the cost of booking the Centre as affordable as possible. As Scouts, when on camp, our objective is to leave the site in a better condition than when we arrived. Solar panels at our Scout Centre will show that we are also striving to achieve that in life.
Lastly, tell us about your environmental objectives and how the addition of solar panels will help achieve your sustainability targets:
Our Scout groups spend as much time as they can do outdoors and in nature. The understanding of our natural environment is a learning point that is regularly discussed with our Scouts and we always urge them to respect their surroundings and look after the environment.
Our objective is to run our Centre in as clean an environmental way as possible, hence our desire to move from any use of gas to electricity. This comes at a significant cost and by having solar panels, this will not only allow us to redirect the saved money to either providing more upgrades to our visitor experience or enable us to continue to provide outstanding value for money when booking. the solar panels would also be a visual reminder to our visitors that we are committed to looking after our environment.