Getting to know your community
Getting to know your community
Community mapping is a process that allows you to understand more about the people and places that make up your community. Mapping is a really fun and useful activity that will engage anyone involved in your Scout group with your area and the community you are part of
Community mapping helps you to:
- Understand where you are already engaging well and where you might recruit
- Identify potential local community relationships which may support you at Scouts
- Identify communities which may need more encouragement or support to engage in Scouting
- Find potential venues
- Identify issues in your community and support your work on community impact
- Reach potential volunteers and young members
How to community map
Community mapping doesn’t have to be a difficult task. You can work on it as a team and get a good understanding by breaking up the work between you.
It will help if you're organised with where and how you store the information you find out.
- Get your Leaders and Young Leaders together (perhaps over a cup of tea and some cake).
- Look at a map of your local area, ensuring your meeting venue is centred in the middle.
- Have your existing young peoples' and volunteers' postcodes to hand and plot them on the map.
- Draw a circle, keeping the venue as the centre point, and the furthest away young member postcode as the perimeter. Once you've mapped out where your Scouts are coming from you'll have an understanding of your catchment area.
- Now think about how far you're prepared to travel. This may be a 20-mile radius from your venue. Draw a circle at 20 miles (or your chosen distance) outside the perimeter.
- Finally, take a look at your focus. What do you want to find out?
Using Google Maps to community map
Google Maps is a great way to map your community. The mapping tool is free to use and allows you to add layers so you can add just postcodes, then schools, faith organisations, community centres, and so on.
Take a look at this how to video to see how you use it. Double click on the video to watch in full screen.
To watch in full screen, double click the video
- Open Google Maps and sign-up to a Gmail account so you can share the map
- Click on the three lines, next to the search button (top left)
- Select 'Your places'
- Select 'Maps'
- Select 'Create maps' (You'll see the map of Britain with a box top left)
- Now look to the box top left of the screen with the following content: Untitled map, add layer, share, preview and base map
- Select 'Untitled map' and change its name, for example Community Mapping
- Select 'Untitled layer' and change to the name of your Section/Group
You can now add layers to the map to organise what you're pinning.
- In the search box on the map, type in your meeting place's post code
- Click 'Add to map'
- Select the paint pot to change the icon and colour of the pin.
- Select the pen to add a description (you might want to add contact details and the days you run the section)
- Now go back to the box in the top left and select 'Add layer'
- Rename the new layer 'Community centres' (or whatever it is you're adding)
- In the search box, use your key search words to identify the organisations you wish to add
- They'll initially display as a small balloon pin. As in step 3, you can change to a relevant icon
- Repeat with new layers
Education
- Key search words: primary, secondary, SEN, nursery, university, college
- Benefits: potential venue, recruitment
Charity
- Key search words: charity, non-profit
- Benefits: learning, relationship building
Faith groups
- Key search words: churches, temples, mosques
- Benefits: potential venue, recruitment, learning, relationship building
Community centres
- Key search words: hub, recreation ground, cultural hub
- Benefits: potential venue, relationship building, recruitment
Green spaces
- Key search words: parks, arboretum, playing field
- Benefits: programme planning
Activity centres
- Key search words: gym, hub, stadium, rink
- Benefits: programme development, relationship building, venue
Local services and governments
- Key search words: council, libraries, doctors, health centres
- Benefits: relationship building, programme planning
Businesses
- Key search words: corner shop, big brand, café, restaurant
- Benefits: relationship building, programme development
What is a community?
A community can be defined as a group of individuals with a commonality that could be in faith, religion, geographical area, social-economic status, nationality, similar interests and so on.
In simple terms, it's the people around us that make up the community. This includes schools, businesses, libraries, community centres, hospitals, local churches, Mosques, Gurdwara, and many more.
Mapping with people in your group
Turn community mapping into a community event, by engaging parent helpers, volunteers, Young Leaders and your Scouts.
Community mapping is a great way to get parent helpers involved, especially parent/carers that can’t volunteer to support section meetings due to childcare needs, work restraints or other accessibility restraints.
- Choose a focus to find out about
- Share the Google Map
- Ask the parent to look for relevant organisations or areas
- Ask them to record:
- Contact name
- Address
- Phone number
- Brief description
This would work really well for school contacts or faith groups.
Community mapping can be run by Young Leaders. Giving them clear support and focus allows them to take real ownership of understanding the community.
We already ask Young Leaders to be involved in Community Impact, so community mapping is a good way to get them understanding the needs of the community too.
Understanding their local area is of great benefit to Scouts.
They can play an active role in community mapping by:
- Taking them on a community walk
- Creating a treasure hunt around the community
- Adding displays to the walls, getting them to create art representing key organisations and businesses
- Asking them about places they like to go in their community - they might come up with places you haven't thought of!
Look at Community Centres and Hubs timetables to see:
- Cultural events that may give you access to new communities or programme ideas.
- When an evening may be free to utilise the space
- Events you could attend and promote Squirrels within
For the same reasons it's useful to:
- Encourage parent/carers to share opportunities with you
- Join local community groups online