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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

Community collage

First suggested by Save the Children
Think of some of your favourite local places and create a collage to welcome anyone new to the area.
Plan a session with this activity

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You’ll need

  • A4 paper
  • Coloured pens or pencils
  • Sticky tape

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Preparing the collage

  • Fold and cut sheets of A4 paper into quarters, enough for a few each.
  • Now, tape together a few sheets of A3 paper to make a larger sheet to stick the drawings on to. This could be colourful paper or it could be a fun background, such as a map of the local area.

Story time

  1. Everyone should sit in a circle.
  2. Someone should read The Camel Library from Save the Children. Make sure you save a copy before the session.
  3. After reading the story, everyone should take some time to reflect on it as a group. We’ve included some questions to help you reflect in the pink box below.

Mahadiya and her friends used to go to school regularly. But during the pandemic, all the schools in her small village in Ethiopia closed.

Around 26 million children in Ethiopia haven’t been able to go to school because of the pandemic.

Mahadiya was worried that she would forget what she had learned. She worried she would have to start working and wouldn't be able to return to school when it opened again.

Mahadiya lives in the Somali region of Ethiopia, which has lots of hot deserts. How hot do you think deserts get?

In lots of villages, packages aren’t sent by car, train or aeroplane. They’re delivered by camels! Do you know what camels look and sound like?

When schools in the area closed, wooden boxes filled with books were strapped to camels and sent across the region. People call this the camel library.

21 camels, each carrying almost 200 books, have visited over 22,000 children in 33 villages.

Hassen travels with the camel and the books, helping the children they visit to learn by reading.

Mahadiya's still sad that she's missing out on school, but she loves that she can continue to read. She's still following her dreams of becoming an engineer - thanks to the camel library!

Group getaways

  1. Clear your space and ask everyone to spread out.
  2. Think of a place in your local area that you have been too, such as a library, swimming pool, or park.
  3. Everyone that's been there should run to stand next to the person who called the place out.
  4. Someone who hasn't been to that place should think of their own place and call that out. Now, everyone who's been there should run over to join them and so on.
  5. If everyone has been to one of the places, choose someone at random to call out the next one.
  6. Repeat this until enough places have been called out, so that everyone has had the chance to run to a few people.

Community collage

  1. Ask everyone to sit down. Share out the small pieces of paper and the coloured pens and pencils.
  2. Now that everyone's thought about some places in their area, it's time to create a group collage. The collage will help to introduce new people to the area and some of your favourite places.
  3. Explain to the group that people might move to a different area for lots of reasons. If we can help to welcome them and show them some great places, we can make anyone feel comfortable and a part of their new community.
  4. Everyone should think of some of their favourite places in their local area to draw on their paper.
  5. You might want to draw your favourite park, a nice place to go for a walk or your favourite building, such as a school, a library or a museum.
  6. Ask everyone to draw a few places each and collect them all together.
  7. Group all the pictures of the same places together, and stick all the drawings to the large sheet of paper you made before.
  8. Have an adult write the names of the different places by the groups of pictures to finish your collage of everyone’s favourite local spots.

Actions you could take

Welcoming signs

Design and display signs that show refugees and displaced children are welcome in your local community.

Run this activity

Maps on a mission

Find a place in your area, such as a shop or library, to display your collage so everyone in the community can see all your great local spaces.

Support a charity

Reach out to a local charity that supports refugees or displaced children and see if you can do anything to help them.

Reflection

Story time

  • What do you enjoy the most about nursery or school?
  • If you could send one thing by camel to help someone what would it be?

Group getaways

  • Did anyone find out about any new places they want to go to?
  • How many people all liked the same places?

Community collage

  • Was it nice to share your favourite places with other people?
  • Which places would you like to visit first if you were new to the area?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

  • Make this activity simpler by printing out or drawing pictures of local places before the session for everyone to copy, colour in or add details to.
  • Step this activity up by getting everyone into small groups to work together to make their own collages.
  • To help everyone get involved in the first part of this activity, you could raise your hands or hold up different coloured objects instead of running into groups.
  • Consider finding and printing out some templates of places around you like parks, libraries, or schools for anyone to colour in that may find drawing them difficult.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Squirrels Local Superhero Activity Badge
Squirrels Get Creative Activity Badge

See if there are any places people have not been too on the collage and take your family or friends there to have a look around.

Discover more at https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/

Encourage everyone to think of their own favourite places and places they would like to know about if they moved somewhere new.