Scouts: the springboard to my career
In his job interview to become a police officer, Scout volunteer Keyur Patel was asked about his skills and experiences – to cope under pressure, to work in a team, to be brave, to show empathy to those in difficult circumstances. Almost all of the examples he gave were examples of things he’d learnt in Scouts. Here, Keyur tells us how Scouts helped him onto the road to his career.
Scouts saved my life. I was involved in, I would never call it a gang when I was younger, I called it a group of mates, but unfortunately the group of mates did stuff on the other side of the law. They were just my friends that I hung out with but Scouts got me out of that life, helped me to choose something better.
I must have been around 8 years old when my cousin introduced me to Scouts. He said he was going so why didn’t I come along. I didn’t know what it was but I went along anyway, and I loved it, I absolutely loved it. It was just for me, an environment where I could fit in. I was never an academic, never one of those academic bright sparks. I recently found out I’ve got dyslexia, so perhaps that’s why I didn’t do as well at school as other people. But when you’re young, you don’t know that. All you know is fitting in.
I knew that I didn’t fit in with the clever crowd, I knew I didn’t fit in with the sporty crowd, and so the other crowd I hung around with were the friends that bumped off school and smoked drugs and did all the silly stuff, but when I went to Scouts I found a place where I wasn’t judged. It didn’t matter whether I was clever or not, it didn’t matter whether I was the sportiest person, what mattered was that I was part of a team.
When I talk to people about what Scouts can do, we talk about skills for life and how these skills have changed our lives. When I was interviewed to become a police officer, two out of the three examples of the questions they asked were Scouts examples. When we talk about skills for life, it’s not just some fluffy thing on the side of a billboard. It’s not a pull-up poster that doesn’t mean anything. For me, it means real life-changing stuff. It means actually using the skills that I’ve gained in Scouts to become a police officer. Now those same skills have helped further my career, as I was recently promoted as a Police Sergeant.
I volunteer because it’s giving something back. I got an incredible amount out of Scouts as a young person. That was the reason I became a leader. Today, because of my job I don’t get to commit to weekly activities but I do a lot of work at County National level, I deliver drugs talks to young people and train new adult volunteers. I’ve been on the training team for about 15 years. I've also recently joined our National Inclusion Team as a National Volunteer Inclusion Manager, where I deliver talks around the UK to volunteers around Race Equity and how we can engage with underrepresented communities. I get an amazing buzz out of it, getting to impart knowledge and experience to the next generation of leaders who are going to use that stuff to help more young people. It’s a great feeling.
When I was diagnosed with leukaemia ten years ago, my friends in Scouts helped me through my diagnosis. I was overwhelmed with well wishes, support from friends and Scout colleagues across the County, who were just amazing. I think we’re very lucky in terms of the Scout network we have.
Scouts gave me confidence to do talks about my cancer journey. I talk about the challenges I went through and I’m able to do that because of Scouts. With my dyslexia I may not be an academic who can do spreadsheets or wordy stuff but I bring my passion to Scouts. I believe in Scouts. It’s done so much for me.
I worked in the domestic violence unit previously for about four years and you have to have a huge amount of empathy for the people you deal with. You may have seen these victims for the fifth time, but you have to maintain empathy. I believe that I learnt that in Scouts. Part of it I think was in me, but the other part was because of Scouts.
Scouts teaches empathy in lots of ways. I explain this to the volunteers I train by talking about how when we take young people hiking we always encourage our young people to hike to the pace of the slowest person so the slowest person doesn’t feel left out and the fastest person by default has to take it back a step. When they say ‘why can’t I just go ahead?’ I’m like ‘well, if you’re the fastest person, you’re going to walk up, have a little rest while you wait for them to catch up but then those behind you never get a rest.’ When you go on a hike in your Queen’s Scout Award you start as a team and you finish as a team. What you’re doing through this is very subtly allowing young people to understand what empathy looks like, allowing them to understand what teamwork looks like, how to work together, and to have courage.
When I translate these skills into my working life, I know it takes courage going out and arresting a suspect who might have a knife on them, but where did I learn that courage from? Well, in Scouts it was about finding the inner strength to do abseiling or rock-climbing or caving when I was petrified! All these things you do in Scouts build up skills for life in you and so when a young person doesn’t have that opportunity – school doesn’t teach this to them – they don’t get the chance to learn by doing. That’s what Scouts does.