Where am I?
You’ll need
- A4 paper
- Pens or pencils
- Masking tape or chalk
Scouts is open to everyone. We don’t identify exclusively with one faith, and we welcome people of all faiths and of none.
We know it’s important for people to learn about each other, including understanding different faiths and beliefs. Scouts always respects people’s beliefs, faiths and cultures, and everyone should be open to learn.
As an inclusive and values based movement, we support our members to engage and learn about different faiths and beliefs in an exciting and meaningful way, even if they don’t have a faith themselves.
Celebrating and understanding differences, including differences in faiths and beliefs, is an important part of our Scout values, which are:
- Integrity: We act with integrity; we are honest, trustworthy and loyal.
- Respect: We have self-respect and respect for others.
- Care: We support others and take care of the world in which we live.
- Belief: We explore our faiths, beliefs and attitudes.
- Co-operation: We make a positive difference; we co-operate with others and make friends.
Our value of Belief and its exploration helps Scouts to learn from other faiths and beliefs. This encourages them to develop or build their personal beliefs and understand their shared values, whether faith-based on not.
We know that learning about faiths, beliefs and different attitudes can help to break down barriers, helps us all to recognise what we have in common, and teaches us to value and respect other people. It also helps us to build up respect, acceptance and knowledge for each other, leading to a more co-operative and inclusive society.
In our diverse society, people can sometimes feel cautious talking about this sensitive subject. However, it's important that Scouts offers young people safe, exciting and open spaces to explore faiths and beliefs. They should be able to engage in personal reflection, as they question and develop their opinions and understanding of the world around them.
Making time for personal reflection and developing our beliefs means exploring the places, people, communities, celebrations or stories which hold meaning for us, and it may not necessarily mean exploring a faith.
For example, someone’s shared values may be their Scout Values and that person may choose to reflect on them at important times, such as when they make their Promise. Others may choose to reflect at certain times of the year, such as a faith-based festival, birthdays, meaningful events or at New Year. Some people may still celebrate events, such as Christmas, but use it as a time to celebrate family, friends and loved ones, as well as for charity and giving.
Discover more about Faiths and Beliefs in Scouts.
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
- 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.
Planning and setting up this activity
- Divide your meeting place into six areas with chalk or masking tape.
- Label each of the areas with one place of worship: Church, Gurdwara, Mandir, Mosque, Synagogue and Wat.
- Choose which clues you’ll start with – some are trickier than others. If you’re not sure, you can always start with the easiest, and then play again with trickier ones.
Get thinking about faith
- Everyone should stand in the middle of the room, and look around at the different places of worship spread around the room.
- The person leading the game should read out three clues from their sheet. They describe one place of worship.
- Everyone should go and stand in the place of worship they think the clues describe.
- Let everyone know which place of worship they were describing. If people want to, they could talk about how and why they chose to stand where they’re standing.
- Repeat steps two to four until the person leading the game has read clues for all of the places of worship.
- Why not give it another go, with a trickier set of clues this time?
Plan your visit
- Everyone should gather together in a circle. This is a great chance for people to ask their friends what they’ve learned about places, and talk about which of the places of worship they might like to visit. They should pass their friends’ thoughts on to the people who lead the sessions, and help them to make them happen.
- Once everyone’s had a chance to have their say, the adult volunteers should start to plan their visit.
- To plan the visit, there are lots of ways to do this. Some ideas include:
- Looking online for places of worship and their contact details
- Asking parents and carers if they've any recommendations or contacts
- Contacting one of the National Scout Active Support Faith Units to learn more about a particular faith.
Attending your visit
- When it’s time for your visit, why not remind yourselves of the clues and see if you can spot any of the people or things they mentioned?
- You could use the activity, What can you spot?, to help you.
Reflection
This activity helped us think about how we can respect and value others for who they are, regardless of their background. Did you learn things about faiths in this activity? Did anything surprise you? Were there any things more than one faith had in common? Were any of the places of worship easier to identify than others, if so, why? How does knowing more about places of worship and faiths help you respect others? Do people deserve the same respect no matter what their faith?
This activity also helped us to build friendships, and feel connected to others in our community. Is it important to you for your friends to understand what sorts of things you believe? Do all of your friends believe the same things, or do some people believe and do different things (such as going to different places of worship)? Do you think it’s important for the people who live in the same community to understand the faiths and places of worship of others in their community? Which places of worship can you find in your local community?
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
This activity is a great chance to find out what we do and don’t know about different faiths, as well as to ask questions. Remember that faith is really important to lots of people – everyone should be respectful, even if they don’t understand something.
It’s up to you which level of clues you start with – be flexible, and adapt as the game goes on.
Everyone could help plan the visit – they could look for places of worship on maps of their area, or help research.
You don't have to move around the room if that doesn’t work for everyone in your group. Why not switch moving to different areas of the room for actions, signals, or sounds?
When planning to visit a place of worship, make sure it’s accessible for everyone in your group – it’s always best to check.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
Your visit to a place of worship is a great time to meet people who follow that particular faith. If you spend some time chatting with someone from the place of worship about their beliefs and how they put them into practice, this activity could also meet requirement two of the Cub World Faiths Activity Badge.
Anyone who knows a lot about a place of worship (including people who go there regularly) could write their own clues for the person leading the game to read out.