Going for gold

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Setting up this activity

• Print out ‘Going for Gold’ activity statements and cut out the award names.
• Stick or place the award names at different stations around the meeting place before young people arrive.
• You could also write them out bigger on sheets of paper if needed.

Introducing the activity

1. Gather everyone together and explain that you’re going to be learning more about the Chief Scouts Gold Award.
2. Ask if anyone knows what the Chief Scouts Gold Award is and how it can be achieved.

Playing the game

1. Explain that a statement is going to be read out and everyone should move to the Challenge Award ‘station’ that they feel the statement most corresponds to. If they guess correctly then the person gets a point. The person with the most points at the end could be declared the winner.
2. To begin, an adult volunteer or young leader should point to where all the Challenge Award ‘stations’ are and say them aloud.
3. Now, the adult volunteer or young leader should read out the first statement.
4. Everyone should then move to their chosen Challenge Award ‘station’.
5. The adult volunteer or young leader should ask some people why they chose the Challenge Award ‘station’ they did.
6. Now, read out the answer. You could give more information about this Challenge Award, too.
7. Move on to the next section and repeat until statements are completed.
8. Ask everyone to add up the points and see how well everyone did.

Thinking about their award

1. Gather everyone back together.
2. Ask everyone to think about the different ways they could complete the Award.
3. For those who’ve already done it, ask what they did and what advice they’d give to other Scouts.
4. Ask participants to consider what they’ll do for their Award. You could ask young people to record their plans to complete the Top Awards, such as by writing down ideas or talking through with each other or planning the next term programme together.
5. Get everyone back together in a circle and ask people to share what they’ll do next to start achieving the award.