A slice of kindness

Streetkids Christmas Feast

Upon hearing about Henley Soup Souls planning a Streetkids Christmas Feast for about 60 underprivileged children on the 19th of November 2022, at St. Andrews church in Henley on Klip. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to ask 1st Henley Scouts to assist the Youth Group for that day. Not only would we be giving back & helping the community, I thought it a great way to introduce other kids to the Scouts movement, planning of games & showing off some of our pioneering skills.


As always 1st Henley did not disappoint & all necessary plans were set into motion to do so. I was given a chance to lead this event & met with the Youth group & organizers.

You can only imagine what a shock I got a week before when I found out that we will now be hosting over 120 kids! …Organized chaos came to mind & I also started doubting my own abilities a little for this event now.

On the last meeting my best plan of action was to go on the advice I was given & to divide the kids into groups with a Youth member & Scout as leaders and then going around to the games we have planned as set bases. Our Scout way of planning might have scared some of the Youth, as I can only imagine how intimidating I had to sound when mentioning bases & rambling on about groups, safety rules (like NO eating & jumping) etc. But the Youth Leader and I both agreed that our plans can work as one & to wait till Saturday morning, see what comes our way and then deal with it together.

We were met with great spirits & big smiles on Saturday morning as we arrived & started pioneering and setting up. A lot of the other volunteers were very inquisitive about what we were building & us singing out loud while doing so as well!

At 11am kids were streaming through the gates, hectically excited & us, as prepared as we could be…


Obviously there was some obstacles to conquer, like language barriers, age groups, cultural differences and so much more. But the mass was called to order quickly by some adult volunteers that have done this already in the past thankfully.

Groups were made, leaders was assigned & for those that weren’t Scouts with obvious reference to the uniforms running around, they were marked with colourful bandannas. The Grease pole we pioneered was amongst the favorites. All the kids had so much fun on it. From face painting to tug-of-war, along with ring toss. We were almost trampled for the 3 legged soccer. And not wanting to be wasteful, we had ping pong ball races in place of egg races. So the wind had more fun with
us all. There was a jungle gym and 2 jumping castles sponsored for the day. Many more games was inside as well. And each volunteer & Scout had their work cut out for them by keeping up, controlling and even loosing some of their group members every now and again.

Thankfully lunch came as a supposed break time for all, but the kids barely gave enough time for that and we had to go running around again. And that was the highlight of it all, that was the reason we were doing this! For them to be spoiled in a way they may never have, thanks to others donating in other ways, each child also received a gift box to take home.

Everyone got to enjoy some well-deserved sweet treats and the day came to an end. We
slowly started cleaning up, with some of the kids even helping us. Taking down our pioneering, moving a bit slower than we started the day, but thankful & humble for what we were part of…
Be the reason someone else smiles!

I would like to thank from the smallest cub to each & every Scout, parents & Scouters that assisted, endured & survived this awesome day that these kids got to experience. Not only did we learn more from each other like Lindiwe knowing languages we never knew she did… How helpful a little cub Kenneth
could be to so called experienced Scouts… Getting whacked with pool noodles… Or hearing one of your Scouts moan about the extra kids they got out of no where…

But no matter the scene,event, camp or hike, we Scouts will always be prepared for what comes our way…

Caitlyn Nolan