Looking to the Future: Belfast

Hi Scott, first tell us what is local scouting like in your community?   

I’m a member of Belfast County Scouts, where I’ve been volunteering for five years. It’s an amazing community where we know there is support available when we need it most. People make Scouts what it is, and we are grateful to have so many volunteers who give countless hours to a growing movement in Belfast. 

As expected, the pandemic had a huge impact on us. We’ve been working alongside Districts to help our Scout Groups bounce back to pre-pandemic numbers, while at the same time getting the opportunity to open new Scout Groups in new areas. 

Which of the changes do you think is going to have the biggest positive impact in your County? 

I really think that the transformation project will help enhance our current culture. The changes in how we look at our teams will help to reinforce that we are a team-led organisation. I also think it’ll make a huge impact to change how we first welcome our new volunteers into the organisation through that initial welcome conversation. The thought of every volunteer knowing their role, their value and their impact will truly, in my eyes, deliver a team approach and sustain the movement as we go into the next strategy.  

What’s been going well with the changes so far? 

I think for us, it’s been going well by keeping the message consistent and meaningful. We’re making sure that everyone knows that we’re on a journey of change and showing them how this will benefit them in the long run. 

We’ve done this by reinforcing how the new membership system will reduce admin processes for our volunteers. We’ve also been explaining the variety of roles parents/guardians can take on which are flexible, which means we can better help share the workload of volunteering.  

What challenges are you facing? 

No matter where you are, you will face one or two hiccups along the change journey – it’s natural and to be expected. One of the hiccups we’ve had is with a few people telling us that they prefer the title of Commissioner and that no matter what a system says, they will remain using the title. 

Of course, this was a tough one to deal with as you are working with volunteers who believe that the title was a sense of achievement or identity. However, once we spoke to them more about the bigger picture of being part of a team, and showing that we are part of a team, we’ve found people naturally start to come round. 

What success are you seeing with the early changes? 

As a Group, we were struggling to get volunteers to move through their journey to become full status. When we looked into this, we found one of the changes we could implement that could make a big impact was reviewing what we could do with the Appointment Committees. As a bit of a trial, we made the conversation more of a “get-to-know-you” chat over a cup of tea/coffee rather than an interview style format. 

The result was incredible. We found that both parties left the meeting more enthused. It was a great opportunity to create an initial connection and at the same time it helped to build the new volunteer’s network within Scouting. Since making this change, we’ve seen a positive result in the amount of people going through to full status, and most importantly, a made a meaningful difference to a new volunteer’s first experience of Scouts.  

Thank you!