Scouts around the globe

Before you begin

• Make some game cards by dividing sheets of paper into quarters, writing key dates in Scouts history on two of them and the reasons why they’re important on the other two. Cut these quarters out and stack them in piles of key dates and piles of reasons. Here are some examples you could use for your dates and reasons. Now take the pile of dates and stick these up on the walls of the activity area. Be sure to make a note of which date links to which reason, if you don’t know all the answers!
• If you’re going to be pressed for time in this session, or have no internet connection in your meeting place, have everyone research a chosen topic about the World Organisation of the Scout Movement at home and bring along with them some useful facts and figures.

Scouts in the past

1. Explain that you’ll be learning about the history of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement. Open up the floor to discuss what your group already knows. You could start by asking:

• • Who started the Scout Movement? Baden-Powell started Scouts in 1907.
  • Where was the first camp? The first ‘test’ camp was held at Brownsea Island, England, with boys from different social backgrounds. They took part in activities that taught them about camping, observation, woodcraft, chivalry, lifesaving and patriotism.
  • Why was it created? It was created to teach young people skills for life through a programme filled with outdoor activities, adventure and fun.

2. Give everyone a card with a description of a significant event on it, those prepared earlier. Each person should think about their event and stand by the date that they think it happened. Give everyone a few minutes.
3. Go around the room and have everyone read out their significant event and the date they’ve chosen. See if anyone can correct anyone else. Go through the correct answers and have everyone move to the correct positions where needed as you go.

Test your knowledge

1. Everyone should now get into teams of five. Each team should sit around a table with some writing materials and a device connected to the internet.
2. Explain that everyone has 15 minutes to come up with a short quiz about an international Scout Movement topic. They should use the internet to research the topic and come up with some facts and figures to use. If groups already prepared research, they should spend some more time framing their questions to make their quiz fun.

‘Topics’ could be given out beforehand or chosen by groups themselves. They could include ‘jamborees’, ‘events’, ‘anniversaries’, ‘countries’ or ‘membership statistics’. When compiling the quizzes, groups could choose whether to include ‘true or false’ style questions, multiple-choice answers or questions with one definitive answer.

3. When everyone’s ready, each team should stand up and between them read out their questions to the rest of the group. Groups should answer on some spare paper. They may discuss the answer quietly in teams. Give everyone 10-20 seconds per question, and read each question aloud twice.
4. Continue until everyone’s read aloud their quiz questions. Now, in the same order, groups should give the correct answers. Total up the scores and see which group are the quiz masters!

Scouts futures

1. Talk through some projects from across the globe that the Scout Movement are currently working on. Examples of these can be found here. Give each team a Scouts project to focus on. They should find out what they can about what the project is, how it works and what its purpose is.
2. While they’re doing this, teams should also start to think about projects that they feel the World Organisation of the Scout Movement should be working on now and in the future. Write these ideas down, explain how they should work and what the purpose of them will be.

Ideas could be related to international events, humanitarian causes and environmental issues.

3. Teams can now feed back and discuss what they found out about current projects and which potential projects they’d like to see the Scout Movement get involved with. Allow each team enough time to answer questions.