Youth shaped

Aim

For every young person to shape their own experience in Scouts, so they can gain the skills they’ll need to be the next generation of great leaders.

For this to happen, it’s vital we create opportunities for young people to use their voices and listen to what they say.

There’s no doubt that when young people shape their experience in Scouts, they improve our movement and are far more likely to achieve Top Awards.

Goals

By 2026, we want:

• 66% of young people aged 6–18 to influence what happens locally in Scouts.
• 57% of young people using their skills to run Scouts’ activities for other young people.
• 40% of young people aged 4–14, and 10% of those aged 14+, to achieve Top Awards.
• To continue to increase the number of young people in volunteer leadership roles.

Progress a year on

• In 2024, we asked our young people how much they’re shaping their Scouts experience. 75% reported they make choices about what they do in Scouts (stable since 2023), and 49% reported their views influence what happens in Scouts locally (-7% from 2023).
• In the past year, across all Sections, we’ve awarded over 110,000 YouShape Awards. This means we achieved 44% of our goal to have 250,000 young people shaping Scouts by 2025.
• We introduced the YouShape Award into our Squirrel Scouts Programme, and 23,790 awards have been achieved so far in our youngest Section.
• We’ve surpassed our goal to have 19,500 Young Leaders in Scouts. There are now 21,162 Young Leaders, who can access the newly improved resources in our Young Leaders’ Scheme.
• In 2024, an impressive 43% of 4–14 year olds and 7% of 14+ year olds achieved Top Awards. Young people did a wide variety of different things to merit these awards such as: leading debate evenings, taking part in recruiting adult volunteers, and partnering with social supermarkets to establish initiatives that support their local communities.
• A central Youth Shaped objective is to keep increasing the number of young people in leadership roles. We’re proud to say there’re now 635 inspiring local Youth Leads (previously ‘Youth Commissioners’), an increase of 83 since 2018. Additionally, we have three elected youth members, aged 18-24 years, who sit on our national Board of Trustees. These young Trustees are actively involved in shaping policies and making strategic decisions, making sure the voices of young people are embedded at the highest level of our movement.
• We’ve been eagerly hearing from our young people to shape our movement’s next strategy. More than 3,500 young people shared their views through our ‘Youth Voice in the Strategy’ sessions. We held four in-person UK Youth Forum events, bringing more than 500 Scouts, Explorers and Network Scouts from across the UK (and British Scouting Overseas) together for the first time. Their input will shape our strategy through to 2035.
• Young people have engaged in shaping our Explorer programme redesign. They’ve been actively involved in developing new badges and activities, which’ll be tested in the coming months.

What's next

• We’ll continue developing our Young Leaders Scheme, finding alternative ways to engage young people through peer leadership.
• We’ll make sure young people have more opportunities to shape their experiences in Scouts– locally, regionally and nationally.
• We’ll keep listening to and involving young people in our new strategy development. Youth Leadership is a substantial theme emerging for our future strategy and youth led activities will continue to inform our work.
• Building on the findings from the Safe Scouting sessions held at the UK Youth Forums, we’ll continue to research and develop ways young people can be involved in managing and supporting their own safety, and the safety of others.