Youth Shaped Scouting

Youth Shaped Scouting is all about ensuring that the 2600 young people who enjoy scouting in County Down, get the opportunity to shape their scouting experience in partnership with adults.

Youth shaped scouting is about evolution, not revolution. It’s about giving young people greater opportunities to give their views and opinions, and making sure that we listen to these, and act on them.

This site provides ideas and resources for leaders and young leaders to make implementing youth shaped scouting as easy as possible, seeks to answer any questions you may have, gives information about opportunities for young people to become more involved in shaping scouting. Please get in touch if you require anything else contact us.

Thanks.

In previous years we have tried to emphasise the need for Youth Shaped Scouting in various ways across all sections of Scouts NI, in keeping with our vision plan 2014 / 2018.

As we start to look forward to a new plan we need to ensure that Youth Shaped is embedded in all we do, for this reason Nationally and Locally we are moving away from a you shape day or week or month, towards Youth Shaped every day.

Rhiannon has been working with Frankie Smith, the Deputy Youth Commissioner for UK Scouts to see how this might look in Scouts NI and they need your help.

We are planning a gathering of Local Youth Commissioners in Northern Ireland to share best practices and discuss wider parts of the National Youth Shaped Strategy, with consultation of how the Youth Commissioner role best fits into your local County/District teams.

Workshops on Youth Shaped Scouting in NI will be at Crawfordsburn (20 Bridge Road South, Helen’s Bay, Bangor, County Down, BT19 1JT) on 27th – 28th January.

The first day will be for County Commissioners, District Commissioners and Section Leaders.

The second day for Youth Commissioners.

Time for both days; 10am – 3pm.

Please keep these days free and plan to help Rhiannon and her team develop the future strategy for involvement of our young people in Scouting every day!

The Cubs made a great start recently with their day for sixes and seconders, let’s all get involved in this and sign up for the January dates.

If you are able to attend please complete the attached form and send to adult.support@scouts.org.uk. NI-Youth-Shaped-event-form

We are looking forward to seeing you at both of these sessions and if you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at either frankie.smith@scouts.org.uk or youthcommissioner@scoutsni.org.

Thank you as always for your support.

Stephen Donaldson
Chief Commissioner

Dear Member,

I am now activity seeking nominations for 16-25 year olds to join the County Youth Team. Self nominations are actively encouraged and expected. The team will be lead by the County Youth Commissioner and will be made up of young people who are committed to making a difference to Scouting in County Down.

The County Youth Team’s role will be to provide support to the County Youth Commissioner to champion Youth Shaped Scouting across the county. In addition to this they will also provide feedback to the County Team to ensure that County Down is youth shaped in partnership with adults.

Please complete a nomination form and return by email to the County Youth Commissioner by 12 noon on Friday 27th July 2018. Email below

CDYT Nomination Form

If you have any questions or would like some more information please don’t hesitate to get in contact with myself via the email address below.

Yours in Scouting

Evan Fleming
County Youth Commissioner
youth.commissioner@countydownscouts.org.uk

Please find a range of downloads and resources below.

• Youth Shaped Scouting – Beaver Scouts
• Youth Shaped Scouting – Cub Scouts
• Youth Shaped Scouting – Scouts
• Youth Shaped Scouting – Explorer Scouts

Achieving Youth Shaped Scouting

Young people working in partnership with adults in Scouting, has always been something we have been proud of. Youth Shaped Scouting not only improves the way we Scout, but also the young people involved. Learning to speak up, be heard and work towards improving something you are passionate about is an incredible learning experience for the youngest Beaver right the way through to our eldest Network member.

Youth Shaped Scouting and empowerment is not something that can be achieved overnight, and the method of achieving the Vision will have to reflect the age, maturity and ability of the young people concerned.

As part of Vision2018 we want every young person to have the opportunity to shape their experience. Youth Shaped Scouting is about young people shaping their own adventure, taking on responsibility, developing skills, making decisions and influencing their own Scout Programme. There are lots of things that you can do to help this happen; from introducing section youth forums to encouraging young people to record video vlogs to share and reflect on past activities and decisions made in the section.

Before you can improve how Youth Shaped you are in your group, it is important to identify what you are already doing. This can be done using the Climbing Wall of Youth Involvement, and remember that your unit may be working at a number of different levels for different activities.

Getting young people involved

There are lots of things that you can do to involve the young people in your section in shaping what you do:

• Introduce forums into your section. Specific information for setting up forums in each section can be found at the bottom of this page.
• Ask young people for feedback and use it to inform future decisions on activities and events. You could circulate simple feedback forms at camps and activity days or have a suggestions box at your meetings.
• Encourage members to produce a section newsletter that could reflect on the activities they have done. It could be circulated to other Groups and leaders to share feedback and ideas.
• Set up a ‘diary room’ at a meeting or event, where young people could go and record their opinions onto a video camera.
• Look at the advice on youth involvement provided by World Scouting.
• See what South Yorkshire Scouts are already doing with their youth involvement project.

These are some section-specific ideas, which can be used alongside the more general ideas above.

Beavers:

• Each Lodge could take it in turns to choose a game to play at the meeting. You could let the Beavers vote using a show of hands to choose between two different activities to complete at a meeting.

Cubs:

• Each Six could take it in turns to choose and run a game at the meeting. You could let them vote between two or three activities or badges to complete at meetings for example.

Scouts:

• Hold a vote on which activity badge the Troop will work towards at meetings. You could also ask them to mind map programme ideas at the beginning of every term, and then work together to narrow it down to a few special activities they would like to be included in the programme.
• If you were going on a camp, you could ask each patrol to plan an evening of activities for the rest of the Troop.
• Hold a youth takeover night, and let a patrol or members elected by the whole Troop plan and run a Troop meeting. Leaders can support them where necessary.

Explorers:

• You could support your young people in planning their own camp, including choosing a location, activities and working out a budget.
• You could hold a youth takeover night, and let a patrol or members elected by the whole unit plan and run a unit meeting. Leaders can support them where necessary.

Network:

• Network should be primarily run by its members.
• You could support the Network members in planning an event or competition, which could involve either other Scout Networks or younger sections.
• Encourage members to set up a blog or social networking page, where they can share their ideas and feedback with other Network members.

See the key youth involvement messages for each section.