Green Young Leaders’ Scheme

Learn how to run the Green Champion programme with the section you support, and become a Green Young Leader in the process.

We’ve created resources to help you navigate each of the following areas:

The Green Champions programme >
The five pathways to nature connectedness >
Planning your Green Champion programme >
Running a community impact project >
Managing groups outdoors >
Delivering a great session >
Managing safety >
Behaviour and inclusion >
Reviewing, evaluating and, feeding back >

You can also download all of this information from the Scout Adventures website.

An illustration of people observing and engaging with the environment.

The Green Champions programme

The project at a glance

A deep dive into the programme

The five pathways to nature connectedness

We are part of nature. As humans, we have a special relationship with the natural world: our actions affect the health of our planet, and nature is really important for our wellbeing too.

Connecting with nature can make us feel good, give us the chance to exercise, and let us breathe fresher air.

When we talk about connecting with nature, it’s not just about being outdoors – it’s about how you engage with nature while you’re there. What you do is more important than how long you spend doing it. It’s a bit like being in a hospital – it’s not the fact that someone’s spending time there that makes them better, it’s the activities that happen and the things they do during that time.

When we look at key mental wellbeing outcomes, connecting with nature brings greater benefits than just being in contact with it. In fact, studies found that the time people spent in nature wasn’t significant. The sense of connection and feeling part of nature were more important.

When the University of Derby did some research, they came up with ways that people can build a better relationship with nature – a relationship that helps themselves and the planet. They suggest five ways to be closer to nature and improve wellbeing:

Sensory contact with the natural world.
Taking time to appreciate the beauty of nature.
Thinking about the meaning and signs of nature.
Finding an emotional bond with, and love for, nature.
Showing compassion and care for nature.

When you’re introducing this topic to others, you could start by asking everyone to think about why nature is important to the planet and to themselves. You could:

Host a group discussion outdoors, maybe around a campfire or in a sunny, grassy area.
Create a graffiti wall. Encourage people to write or draw their ideas on big pieces of paper, a whiteboard, or sticky notes stuck on a wall.
Make paper planes and write ideas on them. Encourage everyone to throw their paper plane to someone else so they can read out the idea.

People might suggest that nature is important because being outside can improve people’s wellbeing or encourage them to be more active. Others might talk about how biodiversity keeps our planet healthy.

Next, encourage everyone to think about why people might be less connected to nature these days. People might mention the industrial and technological revolutions that have enabled more jobs or tasks to be done remotely or by machinery. They might also think about how technology means there’s lots of competition for people’s attention, or how there are now more entertainment options available indoors. People spend time inside in their own homes (with televisions, laptops, phones, or books) and in local spaces (like shopping centres, cinemas, or community centres).

What’s next?

If you’re smashing your way through your missions, think how you can put a green twist on them. There’s a great chance to do this in mission four, when you’re organising part of your section programme and can really make it your own.

In and beyond the Green Champions programme, encourage everyone to:

think of different ways to bring the pathways into your sessions
build better relationships with nature
explore how classic Scout activities that are outdoors and adventurous can bring people closer to nature.

Planning your programme

Choose your theme

Not sure what theme to choose? Play ‘Go green’ to learn about each theme and vote for your favourite.

Run this activity >

First things first, you need to decide which of the three Green Champions themes your group is going to work towards. It’s important that:

Everyone gets involved in deciding what you do.
The theme is suitable for your location (for example, if you don’t have access to lots of outdoor space to interact with animals or grow plants, you may choose to focus on tackling pollution).
Your programme makes an impact in your local area.

There are lots of ways to discuss and decide on a theme. We’ve provided one idea (‘Go green’) to get you going.

Running a community impact project

The steps of the Green Champions programme match up with the requirements of stage one of the Community Impact Staged Activity Badge.

At Scouts, we believe that successful community impact projects are four things. They’re:

Relevant to communities. This means that the community affected by the project identify and recognise the issue the project tackles.
This means they make genuine changes to the lives of others and that people’s actions contribute to societal change – they’re not just an activity that’s nice to do.
Good for young people. This means that they help young people to develop skills through actions that are challenging and fun.
Embedded, progressive, and habit forming. This means that action isn’t just a one-off thing – it’s sustained over an extended period of time and gets more sophisticated as people grow and develop skills.

Managing groups outdoors

An illustration of a girl planting seeds by a tree, whilst a boy waters it.

Scouts is about adventure, fun, and building skills for life – and we try to do as much of this as possible outdoors. Running sessions outside brings another set of considerations, so we’ve put together some handy tips to help you get the most of outdoor activities while managing risk.

No matter how detailed and considered your session plan is, there are likely to be moments of unscheduled free time. For example, unscheduled free time often happens when a group has finished an activity, but they have to wait for another group to finish before everyone can move onto the next task. When you have nothing to do, it’s easy to get restless.

Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about some people in the group taking more time than others. Sometimes you might want to slow down the people who are faster by giving them an extra challenge. It’s up to you how you do this – you could give them something extra to carry on a hike or give them fewer helpful resources for a puzzle-solving challenge, for example. You could also give everyone a longer challenge that they can work on whenever they have time between other activities.

Games and songs

Play a game that keeps the group together. Here are a couple of five-minute fillers (some require props, but others can be played at a moment’s notice):

Monster in the middle. The group hold hands to form a ring – they’ll pretend this is an electric fence. In the middle is a monster – you! The group move so that the monster never touches the fence. The monster carefully picks a path to the next destination (occasionally making strange noises and jumping towards unsuspecting members of the electric fence).
Knights, dragons and shields. Everybody is a knight. They secretly pick another person in the group to be a dragon, and a second person to be their shield. When the leader shout ‘Go!’, everyone should move to keep their shield between themselves and the dragon. Everyone has different dragons and shields, so people have to stay on their toes.
Zip, zap, boing! In a circle, pass the word ‘Zip’ from person to person with an appropriate hand action (such as pointing). If someone says ‘Zap’ instead of ‘Zip’, then the direction changes and everyone should start passing ‘Zip’ the other way around the circle. If someone says ‘boing’ then the next person is missed out. Got that?
Scavenger hunts. Prepare a list of cryptic clues, then challenge everyone to find objects matching your descriptions and bring you the evidence.
Juggling balls. Hundreds of games can be played with a set of juggling balls. ‘Team juggle’ requires the whole group to pass the ball in a sequence. ‘Object tag’ is similar to normal tag but you become ‘it’ if the ball hits you, while in ‘human chains’, players have to pass the ball from one end of the chain to the other in the quickest possible time.

Songs that are based on repetition are ideal for keeping a group together. The format is simple: you sing or shout a line, and the group sings or shouts it back at you. Try searching for songs such as The Crazy Moose or The Little Jeep.

You could also try activities where everyone has to follow a leader – they can’t follow the leader if they can’t see them, which means everyone has to stick together.

Delivering a great session

When delivering a session, remember these five essential elements:

Supervise the group

Good supervision comes down to four things – just remember to clap:

C Give clear instructions and check understanding.
Line of sight. Try not to have your back to anyone and use boundaries.
A Stay away from obvious hazards or distractions, and give people with free time jobs to do to keep them engaged.
P Stand where you can minimise risk – for example, next to the trip hazard. Move so you can see what is happening.

Use effective demonstrations

You couldn’t start building a house if you had no idea what a house was supposed to look like. Most people want to see something done before they have a go themselves. It helps the brain to see how the theory works in practice and means that fewer misunderstandings happen because of the language you use.

A good demonstration has five stages that pass on information in three different ways:

visual ways. This means showing learners how to do something by demonstrating or modelling it.
auditory ways. This means explaining or telling leaners how something works step by step.
kinaesthetic ways. This means giving people the chance to learn by doing and apply learning for themselves.

There’s an easy way to remember these stages, you just have to effectively demonstrate your ideas:

	What you’re doing	For example…
Introduce	Give some context to help people understand what’s happening.	You could say: ‘We’re going to learn how to pick up and hold a bow, load an arrow and fire it at the target.’
Demonstrate	Show the skills people will use from start to finish without talking. Emphasise your movements by making them slow and over the top.	Calmly and deliberately stand on the shooting line, pick up the bow, knock an arrow, draw, aim and release.
Explain	Repeat the same process but explain what you’re doing at each step.	Repeat the same process but explain what you’re doing as you show each step.
Apply	Get the group to apply their knowledge to reinforce their understanding. You could ask them to tell you how to do it or do the same actions in the air, for example.	You could say: ‘Everybody find some space and copy what I do as if you were holding the bow.’ or ‘As a group, give me instructions on how to load and fire the bow.’
Summarise	Sum everything up and tell people what will happen next.	You could say: ‘Excellent, now you can have a go too. We’re going to have two people at a time.’

Use simple clear instructions

People can only hold around five pieces of new information in their head at any one time, so it’s important to break instructions down into clear simple stages. Don’t add unnecessary detail when it’s not needed – you can teach everyone more or answer questions when everyone understands what they are doing.

Remember to kiss – keep it short and simple!

For example, here’s a clear way to demonstrate putting on a harness. A leader should tell everyone:

Now we’re going to put on our harnesses.
Put your left foot into the blue loop.
Now put your right foot into the red loop.
Grab the black waist band and pull it up like a big pair of pants.
Find the buckle on your right.
Pull on the tab to tighten the waist.
Do the same for your leg loops.

In contrast, talking at people and overloading them with information makes it difficult to follow along and understand.

Avoid long, rambling explanations. Notice how much harder it is to follow this example:

‘The next thing we’re going to do before we put on our chest harnesses and helmets is going to be to put on our waist harnesses. These waist harnesses are made of super strong nylon that could hold up an elephant, so you’ll be fine. They also have ABS buckles which make them really easy to do up. First, you’ve got to stick your feet into the two smaller loops which are called leg loops because they go around your legs…’

Be positive

The way you word your instructions makes a big difference. Try to be positive in the information you give – it’s reassuring and sets a standard for the behaviour you’re looking for. Tell people the positive things you want them to do – don’t give them ideas of things you don’t want them to do!

Positive instructions

Wait for a thumbs up before you start to climb.
Walk when you’re collecting arrows to make sure you don’t trip.
Everybody look at me and listen for the next instruction.

Negative instructions

If you start before I say so then you’ll have to wait until the end of the group.
Don’t run up to the arrows because you might trip and stab yourself in the eye.
Everybody shut up – I’m telling you what to do.

Check understanding

Never assume everyone understands your instructions. Always check that the group understand what to do and when to do it.

Good ways of checking understanding include:

Asking short, fact checker questions, like ‘Everyone stand on the red line. Which colour line should you stand on?’
Asking deeper questions to engage the group with the information, like ‘When do you think we should check our harnesses are still tight?’
Getting everyone to practise, like ‘We’re going to play a practice round of stuck in the mud – this one doesn’t count.’
Asking people to summarise the information, like ‘In pairs, summarise what you need to do in one sentence.’

An illustration of people planting seeds and growing flowers and trees.

Managing safety

Safety doesn’t have to be intimidating. To manage risk effectively, you just need to be prepared. A large part of staying safe is about being organised, planning, asking the right questions, and doing things that promote safety. This doesn’t take away from the group experiencing an appropriate sense of adventure.

This guidance will help you to put the Scout motto into practice before, during, and after sessions.

Never be afraid to change or stop an activity if risk increases.

Keep your cards close

If in doubt, we have different coloured cards to support leaders in delivering a safe Scouts experience for everyone.

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity.
Our code of practice for adult leaders is the Yellow Card.
For young people and Young Leaders, the code of practice is set out in the Orange Card.
If you want safety guidance and emergency procedures, refer to the Purple Card.
To learn about our policies on alcohol, use the Green Card.

Behaviour and inclusion

Inevitably, when you’re managing a team, you’ll come across people who you find it trickier to work with. Some people might talk over others, or not listen to instructions. It can be tempting to ignore people and hope that any challenging behaviour will just stop – but it’s much better to promote positive behaviour to the group and lead by example. This can be challenging so we’ve created some tips to help you deliver sessions which everyone can engage with and enjoy.

Reviewing, evaluating, and feeding back

Reflecting on what you’ve done and learned is the most important part of a session, but we know it can also be the most difficult. Here are our top tips for reviewing, evaluating, and feeding back.

Make your reflection a game

All reviews should be linked back to the objectives that you agreed at the start of the session. Why not try some quick games to kick off or motivate reflective practice at the end of a session?

Activities

The movement map

Everyone should spread out in the space.
The person leading the game should ask someone a question about the activity or game they’ve just finished. Don’t forget to use the 4Fs.
The person should say their answer out loud.
Everyone that agrees with the answer should run and form a group around that person.
The person leading the game should choose someone who didn’t join that group and ask them to give their own answer.
Again, anyone that agrees should run to form a group around the person who’s just answered. Some people may move from one group to another because they agree with both answers – that’s OK.
The person leading the game should keep asking people questions until there are no more new answers.

Replay the day

In small groups, people act out different parts of the session. Ask people what they enjoyed, found most challenging, learned the most from, and so on.

Wheely easy discussion

Lay out one rope for each person in the group as if they were making the spokes on a bicycle wheel – if you don’t have ropes, you could draw lines in another way or ask people to imagine the ropes.
Everyone should stand at the outer point of their line – this is the start. Inside, where all the ropes meet, is the goal.
Ask the group questions about the activity. Everyone can then rank themselves against the question by moving in or out along the spokes. For example, you might ask questions like:
- How well did you listen to other people?
- How hard was it to complete the challenge?
Everyone should discuss whether they believe people’s self-assessments are correct or not.

It can be difficult for everyone to have eye contact with each other once they’re in position. This often means that the people nearest the centre pay attention to each other (rather than to those further out). You could make it easier for everyone to chat as a group by asking people to place an object on their spoke instead.

Talking knot

This is a variation on the talking stick – where only the individual holding the knot can speak.

Tie a piece of rope into a large circle, making sure it’s big enough for the entire group to stand or sit around and hold onto.
The person who’s holding the knot begins the discussion.
When they’ve finished, everyone should work together to pass the rope in a clockwise direction around the group until the knot reaches someone who wishes to speak – they should shout ‘Stop!’

Question-a-ball

On each face of an old football, write some questions about the facts, feelings, findings and future of the session you just completed. For example:

What did you do?
How did it make you feel?
What did you learn?
If you did this activity again, what would you change?

To play, everyone should throw the ball to each other. Every time someone catches it, they should answer the question that their right thumb is touching.

Plastic pollution

Five pathways to nature connectedness

Plan		Do	Review
Problem to be solved – increasing the number of bees in your local area.
Structure the session	Plan	Do	Review	Reflect on the session
Who? The people. What? The activity. When? The timings. Where? The location. Why? The outcomes. How? The processes.	Choose where to put your bee hotels. Decide on the materials you’ll use to create them.	Build a bee hotel.	Evaluate the success of the hotels. Did they increase the number of bees? Discuss what you could change to make a bigger impact on the bee population next time.	What worked well? How would change the plan next time?
	During the activity
Before, during, and after the activity

Who? The people.	Who’s leading the group? Who are the group members? Does anyone have any allergies, medical conditions, or additional needs that you need to consider? Does anyone have any contacts who could donate recycled materials, gardening equipment, soil, seeds, or craft items for decorating?
What? The activity.	What type of planters will the group create? What equipment will they need to make each planter? What should people wear? What should they bring with them? What does everyone want to grow in each planter?
When? The timings.	When will people create the planters? Does what you’re planning to grow thrive in a particular season? How long will this activity take? When will you finish building the planters? When do people need to revisit the planters to feed and water them?
Where? The location.	Where should you build the planters? Where should you put the finished planters?
Why? The outcomes.	Why are people growing plants? Why are people using recycled materials to grow plants in?
How? The processes.	How will you make sure this activity is safe? How will you effectively manage any risks? How can people prepare for this activity? How will you action each element of the activity? You’ll need to think about gathering items of recycling, crafting them into planters, and growing flowers or vegetables in them.

Key information
Session theme	For example: Growing green – take action
Date
Start time
End time
Leaders
Young people	Use this space as a register to write down the names of all young people who attend the session
Session plan
Time	Activity	Equipment
For example, 6.45pm to 7pm	For example, people arrive. Play chair football as everyone enters.	For example, footballs and chairs

Who? The people.	Who are you? Who are the group? Who’s the leader? Who has any medical issues? It’s often not appropriate to discuss this with the whole group.
What? The activity.	What activity is this? What will everyone be doing? What do people think so far? What have people done before? What do people need to be wearing? What do they need to have with them?
Where? The location.	Where will people be based throughout this activity? Where are the boundaries?
When? The timings.	When will each person have a go? When does the activity finish?
Why? The objectives.	Why are the group doing this activity? What does each person want to get out of it? Is there more to this than just completing the activity? What are the session objectives?
How? The process.	How exactly do people do this activity? How do they prepare for it? How do they use the equipment? How do they tell the instructor if they don’t want to do it?

Green Young Leaders’ Scheme

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