Allnatt News

First Ventnor Guides Win! Great excitement in the East Dene office last Friday as we all listened attentively to BBC Radio Solent live, waiting to hear whether 1st Ventnor Guides had been successful in their bid for an award from the Community Chest. The phone rang and the next minute Julie, who acts a s Guide Leader in her voluntary time, was being interviewed and informed that they had won the major share of £550! This will go towards enabling all the girls in her unit to attend an International Camp to be held in Lyndhurst in the New Forest in July. Flame 2012 is centred around the Olympics and Paralympics values which are respect, excellence, friendship, courage, determination, inspiration and equality. Flame actually stands for Fun, Laughter, Adventure, Memories and Excitement and will be a once in a lifetime experience for the girls. Julie is determined that not one of the girls will be excluded because they can’t afford it so watch out for further fundraising events ahead.

IOL Regional Conferences Our teams will be making positive contributions to the Regional Conferences being held later this week as well as being inspired further by the talks and workshops being led by other leading practitioners. On Thursday we will be at Runways End for the Southern Region and at Mill on the Brue for the Wessex Region. We are all looking forward to looking around two impressive centres too.

Quality of Staff Interviews have already begun in Swanage and will start at East Dene early next week. We have had some very impressive candidates and together with the high number of returning tutors from last year, we are expecting to have an especially strong team this year.

Promotional Weekend Plans have now been drawn up for the Promotional Weekend to be held at East Dene on the weekend March 23rd to March 25th. This is in conjunction with our latest partners, Goodleaf Tree Climbing, and is expected to attract a friendly crowd of practitioners who want to try this “new” outdoor activity. There will also be geocaching, slack lining and the opportunity to attempt our new Scramble Course. It is intended to be fun, relaxing and above all a chance to have an inspirational and motivational weekend at the beginning of the season.

Weddings It appears that the dreary months of January and February are spurring others to think ahead and make plans for warmer weather as we have had a surge on interest in our wedding services. I took a reservation on Saturday for June 2014! Our next one is coming up soon on 25th February.

Partner Schools This year's Teaching Guides are now complete and will be winging their way to you over the next two weeks. Based on the traditional "Education, Inspiration and Play " concept we have developed the individual modules further bringing in some new ideas if only to keep the teachers inspired and on their toes!

Inspired Tutors As always our core team of Swanage tutors returned from the Annual NAFSO Conference, held this year in Snowdonia, full of excitement and enthusiasm. We are especially enthused by the reassurance that our re-branding into Allnatt Venues was a positive and forward thinking project.

Goodleaf Tree Climbing On the 24th and 25th March we will be hosting a joint promotional weekend for Goodleaf Tree Climbing at East Dene. Several of our staff were introduced to the activity recently and totally converted as it is so in keeping with our ethos. Invitations will be coming out shortly.

National Citizens Service We are delighted to be involved with this scheme this year and aim to make it the "Summer of a Lifetime" for over 90 young people.

Safety and Quality Assurance At present it is necessary for Outdoor Centres to hold a licence if they provide one or more of a small number of named activities. This has now done its job and standards of safety in outdoor activities is now to have a more "common sense, common safety" approach with the necessity to hold a licence revoked in 2013. We have always believed that the same standards should apply to every activity we provide and will continue to be members of the BAHA (soon to be be re-named the British Activity Providers Association) which necessitates an annual independent inspection which is an essential part of our own quality assurance. In addition we hold the LOtC Badge and Adventuremark.

Watoto We are delighted to be hosting a Choir from the Watoto Orphanage in Uganda again soon. When they came last time they won all our hearts and this time they will be giving a performance in the Bonchurch Parish Church as well as at several other venues around the Island and Swanage.

Southern Region of the Institute for Outdoor Learning The annual Conference will be at Runways End, a newly re-furbished Outdoor Centre near Aldershot, on February 9th. The Allnatt Team will be presenting an innovative workshop based on Creativity in the Outdoors.

Allnatt Facebook Page December 2011 Allnatt now has its own Facebook page. You can see our new page here Follow Allnatt on Facebook.

New Website Launched October 1st sees the launch of the new Allnatt website. This new site will be regularly updated with new information being added every month, so make sure to bookmark us and come back to see us soon. And why not subscribe to the Allnatt enewsletter - its absolutely free!