Community Impact

‘Helping to leave the world a little better than we found it’ has been in our DNA since 1907. Through social action, Scouts make a difference – not just to young people taking part, but to the entire community they’re helping. A vital part of any great Scout programme is the running of high-quality community impact projects, and these projects take planning and time.

‘A Million Hands’ is our campaign to mobilise members, in support of a selection of themes chosen by our young people. The campaign provides ‘off the shelf’ resources for leaders, Young Leaders (aged 14-17) and young people themselves, making the delivery of the Community Impact Staged Activity Badges easier. Taking part in community impact projects is essential for young people hoping to achieve our top awards.

The themes and partners for 2019–2025, as selected by young people, are:

• Better mental health for all, with Mind, Inspire and SAMH
• Supporting refugees and displaced children, with Save the Children
• Understanding disability, with the National Autistic Society
• Protecting our environment, with Ending homelessness, with Crisis and The Simon Community NI
• Kindness in every community, with the British Red Cross

As well as ‘A Million Hands’, we’ve responded to time limited opportunities, to empower young people to act on issues that matter to them.

Our Community Impact goals

By 2025:

• At least 42% of young people will be making a positive impact in their community each year – 40% of young people aged 4-14, and 10% of those aged 14+, will be achieving the top awards.

Progress on Community Impact

Despite COVID-19 restrictions stopping Scouts meeting face-to-face for part of the year, our young people still stood up and took practical action to help others. 30% of Scouts took part in a community impact activity at least once a term.

• Our ‘A Million Hands’ partners reacted with speed, precision and passion to develop the ‘Twenty Minutes to Change the World’ video series. This online series of videos helped engage our members on big societal issues, even when they couldn’t meet face-to-face.
• This video content is supported by 135 community impact activities on our Activity Finder. Over 60,000 people viewed this project, and over 1,563 became inspired to take action.
• Community Impact Staged Activity badge sales have increased by 42%, rising from 14,628 in 2020 to 20,785 in 2021. It’s still a considerable way off the 41,917 badges sold in 2019, but it illustrates a positive trend of recovery and a great deal of promise for 2022.
• Over the last year, our young people delivered over 12,010 acts of kindness in care homes.
• We had over 10,000,000 impressions on social media for our ‘3 for Three’ mental health awareness campaign, encouraging 4,575 young people to become Wellbeing Champions.
• We united with the World Organisation of the Scout Movement (WOSM) and our global membership to take part in ‘Promise to the Planet.’ This campaign encourages young people to help combat climate change. Our young people, staff and volunteers joined together with their counterparts from over 25 countries, and with expert partners in WWF, the Cabinet Office and the United Nations. They developed an 20 international environmental social action campaign, helping our members to take practical action, and use their voices to protect our shared home. From planet-friendly diets and changing transport habits, to afforestation and eliminating single-use plastic, our young people showed the world they’re playing their part, and that world leaders must play theirs, too.
• As part of Promise to the Planet, young people went to the COP- 26 climate change conference in Glasgow with our Chief Scout, Bear Grylls. This was a historical moment in time, as countries agreed on many initiatives for reducing the impact of climate change. Scouts spoke at over 10 high profile events, in front of negotiators, politicians, sector leaders and change-makers. COP-26 helped profile Scouts as a serious player in the space of environmental action and sustainability.
• Promise to the Planet resulted in over 100 million hours of action taken worldwide, There were 337 million opportunities to view the campaign in the media, and culminated in a visit from TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to a local Scout group.
• On top of this, we’ve embedded social action into our Squirrel section. This focuses on how Young Leaders (aged 14 to 17) can develop skills, and take the lead on designing and running social action projects with 4 and 5-year-olds. We’ll make sure we support more young people, especially those from deprived backgrounds, to develop skills for life through regularly helping their communities.

What’s next

In 2022 and beyond, we’ll be supercharging our A Million Hands project, by working with our partners to offer physical, virtual and hybrid opportunities for young people. We’ll be communicating more often, in new and exciting ways. We’ll be following on from our Promise to the Planet campaign with an organisation environment and sustainability policy. We’ll provide additional opportunities for young people to take practical, hands-on action, and how use their voice to create change.

This’ll mean, at a minimum, 40% of our members will take part in high-quality community impact activity at least once a term during 2022.

The 10 young people who lead our work in this area (the Community Impact Group), supported by our UK Assistant Commissioner for Programme (Community Impact), continue to play a pivotal role. They’re making sure Scouts are a beacon of hope in dark times, and we’d once again like to thank them for their leadership, passion, and determination in another challenging year.