BP phone home

Creating and managing contacts on a smartphone or in an email can help everyone feel more organised and prepared when sending out information. This activity gives everyone the opportunity to do this while planning an expedition.

Before you begin

• For the e-mail portion of the activity there should be a central email address set up using the name of the group – if there is not already one it can be set up easily (and for free) through a number of providers including Google, Outlook and Yahoo.
• Ideally, every adult involved in the activity should be able to access the email account. At least two members of the adult team must be able to access it for safeguarding reasons.

Have a quick re-read on the guidance of keeping everyone safe on the yellow card and apply this to online interactions. This can be found here.

• The expedition can be based upon one that is being planned as part of a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or and Expedition challenge award or it can be an imaginary one. Check your programme to see if you have any expeditions coming up that you could plan for.

There are example expedition options available below if needed.

Expedition Planning

1. Everyone should split into small groups or teams.
2. If needed, each group will choose a location, time and purpose for their expedition from the options below.

Consider getting everyone to create a list or different locations, times and purposes before starting this activity.

Who ya gonna call?

1. The groups should now consider who they would need to contact to plan this expedition and create a list of at least 5 contacts they think they would need.

Groups should consider the following things when choosing who they might need to call; travel, accommodation, international Scout contacts, UK embassies, currency exchange, equipment, travel insurance, food, their families.

2. Using available technology, each group should now research the phone numbers for their chosen contacts and demonstrate to the section volunteer team that they can save these contacts suitably into the phone.

If there aren’t enough smartphones available for each team, consider creating a master list for people to choose from and move the phone between the tables for people to complete this. Give everybody the opportunity to show that they can input a number into the phone and after each team has finished get them to delete the numbers off the phone.

Putting the E in Expedition

1. Using the same companies, get the groups to create a list of email addresses that they would use to contact about their expedition and add these to the contact list on the group email.
2. Allow each group the time to create an email on paper to one of these companies that explains their expedition, the reasoning for contacting them and what they would like from that company.

Explain that at the end of the activity, this email may be read out and discussed with the rest of the group.

3. Once drafted get each group to type up this email and send it if needed.

If they are not actually planning their expedition, get them to send it back to the group email so they still have the opportunity to practise sending a professional email.

4. At the end, select a few emails that have been sent, read them out and discuss them with the whole group. Talk about how it’s written and whether it will get them the answer they are looking for.