What's Furthering Reach?

What do Scouts mean by furthering reach?

Furthering reach is supporting your local Scout group to be open and inclusive to the community that feeds into it. It's about the attitudes and behaviours that make everyone feel welcome.

It's not about ticking a box in relation to inclusion, or trying to find a percentage of a certain demographic. It's thinking about the make-up of the community and letting them know that they're welcome. Remember, you can only directly reflect/recruit the diversity in your own area, but you can still find out more about a community. 

What is the Furthering Reach Toolkit?

Reaching out into the community can be overwhelming. Where do you start? Who makes up your community? How can we engage with underrepresented communities? The toolkit is here to help guide you step by step on how to further your reach in your community. It provides practical tips and ideas for things you can do as volunteers as well as with your Scouts. 

The toolkit is informed directly from the membership and shares advice, stories and tips on how to support your Scouting to be open and welcoming to all communities.

We also worked alongside several organisations which include:

• Whizz-kidz
• Early Years Alliance
• Coram
• Girlguiding

Benefits of furthering reach

Scouting has a rich history of engaging positively with the community and furthering reach is very much an extension of this.

Benefits to furthering reach include:

• Reflecting the community your group runs in
• Engagement with different viewpoints
• Building world views
• Supporting openness
• Recruitment
• Access to wider resources (funding, venues, volunteers)
• Reaching those who'll benefit most