Scouts begin a journey

Our scouts began a journey last night, engaging in a project known as "A Million Hands"

For some the journey began over a year ago, others have seen it on social media and maybe dipped in, for me the journey really began a week before at Gilwell Reunion, when a young lady and her team started to present the project to myself and a bunch of other leaders using power point.  She got under my skin, not because of the subject, but because when it all went wrong on the screen and the videos would not play she just kept on going, she had passion and it was obvious she really knew her stuff and was part of this because it engaged her.  Eventually her team got the videos to play.  Still back to our scouts and their journey as this is about our members the scouts taking the lead and making some decisions.

The evening was set up and ready this was their first night back and I the Group Scout leader had been let loose on them.   Death by Power point time, actually the power point was just the thread that tied the elements together.  I have the presentation if other groups would like to use it for their initial presentation.

We began with the magic words "Life Changing Adventure, a million hands can change the world".  Now there is a promise and a half. The scouts by this time have settled down and possibly they are thinking that they can have a little kip whilst I bore them for a while then they can get on with Scouting.   That is of course not what I had in mind.   This is youth led scouting and they needed to know from the get go that they would be involved in this little partnership of an evening. So up they get ready to vote as I explain that this first part will look at some questions that were posed to the youth forum a while back.  I confirmed there were no right and wrong answers and that it really did not matter how they responded so long as the response was theirs and not what they thought I wanted to here.  So four simple questions were asked and the results were broadly as I had been led to believe they would be.

1. Scouting provides me with enough opportunities to improve the lives of people in my community.
2. Scouting should help me to take social action.
3. Knowing I have made a difference to people/ the environment through Scouting is important to me.
4. Improving the lives of others is an important part of Scouting.

This was followed by a chance to sit and rest and strain to hear (I forgot the speakers) whilst watching the introduction video to the whole project.

With the video watched and a short explanation about the young people in the video and how they are all between 14 and 25 and have led this whole project and made it happen we moved back onto interactivity.  Yes more questions but this time we shared the results from the survey after each quesiton.

• Is improving the lives of others an important part of scouting?

The survey said 95% of 12-25 year old Scouts said that improving the lives of others is an important part of Scouting. Our scouts were in agreement, they voted before we shared the results with them.

• Would you rather any action on issues taken was local, national or international?

The survey said 60% Had a preference for local, 14% Had a preference for national and 26% Had a preference for international. Our scouts disagreed they were more in favour of international.  I reassured them this was fine and it was their own voice we wanted to hear, for us it was what they thought that mattered and there is no right and wrong.  I have to admit I was kinda relieved to get that message out early on in the session so all good.

Next up we introduced the four Social issues and lets face it this article will be boring if there are no pictures the presentation was full of them so here is a boring picture to introduce the four to you.

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