Community impact

Aim: At Scouts, helping our communities is a huge part of what we do. We’ve always been committed to social action and making a difference, both to the young people taking part in projects and the communities they’re helping.

While high quality community impact projects take planning and time, they’re essential to any Scouts programme, especially for young people hoping to achieve our Top Awards.

Goals

By 2025

• At least 42% of young people will make a positive impact in their community each year.
• 40% of young people aged 4–14, and 10% of those aged 14+, will be achieving their Top Awards.

A Million Hands

• Our ‘A Million Hands’ initiative, the award-winning partnership we started in 2019 with charity partners, ended this year. It aimed to mobilise members to undertake community impact projects on a variety of themes picked by our young people.
• The campaign provided ‘off the shelf’ resources for leaders, Young Leaders (aged 14–17) and young people themselves, making it easier to deliver our Community Impact Staged Activity Badges.
• Young people had selected the themes and partners for 2019–2023:
  • Better mental health for all, with Mind, Inspire and Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH)
  • Supporting refugees and displaced children, with Save the Children
  • Understanding disability, with the National Autistic Society
  • Protecting our environment, with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
  • Ending homelessness, with Crisis and The Simon Community NI
  • Kindness in every community, with the British Red Cross
• Since it was launched, A Million Hands drove more than 700,000 hours of collective action represented through 110,000 community impact badges.
• The end of this initiative marks a real achievement in our strategic ambitions for community impact and service, reflecting the potential for positive change and Scouts’ commitment to leaving the world better than we found it.

Progress a year on

In the past year, young people dedicated over 180,000 hours to community impact. By doing so, we made tangible strides towards creating meaningful and sustainable change in our communities. This dedication and perseverance exemplifies the commitment of individuals and organisations involved in driving positive social impact on a large scale.

The Scout Experience Survey showed that 48% of young people took part in action to make a positive difference to their communities or the world around them. This included Scouts contributing to The Big Help Out during the Coronation weekend, which showed Scouts serving our communities and learning skills for life through community engagement efforts in more than 100 locations.

Census data showed that 41.6% of young people from Squirrels to Scouts achieved their Chief Scout Awards, with 5.4% over the age of 14 completing at least one of their Top Awards. To achieve our Top Awards, young people need to take part in community impact activities appropriate to their age group.

Our Community Impact group of young people from across the UK led a review of how we support them to create impact in communities including through A Million Hands. This review concluded that A Million Hands gave young people a powerful springboard for getting involved in their communities. Going forward, young people asked us for more focus on having an impact in their immediate local communities, building on the programme resources developed for A Million Hands. The review led to a refocus on approaches aimed at maximising the effectiveness of community engagement efforts.

What's next

• We’re launching the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) Earth Tribe programme in the UK, connecting our young members’ desire for local community engagement to an international team of changemakers working to protect their environments.
• The Earth Tribe initiative empowers young people to take a proactive approach to global environmental challenges by acting in their location, such as climate change and environmental degradation. By mobilising young people around the world, Earth Tribe holds immense promise in fostering a collective sense of responsibility towards safeguarding our planet for future generations.
• We’ll further develop our wider community impact programme resources to support leaders to create opportunities for young people to gain skills for life while serving our communities.