Wear the UK Youth Team Necker
You’ll need
- Scissors
- Pens or pencils
- A4 paper
The UK Youth Team’s vision is that young people are heard, empowered, and able to shape Scouting at every level. They ensure youth voice is meaningful, inclusive, and impactful, helping young people feel confident and motivated to influence decisions affecting their Scouting experience and beyond.
What do they do?
The UK Youth Team supports youth voice across the UK by improving opportunities for young people to influence Scouting at every stage of the journey. This includes:
- Representing young people: Ensure voices are heard at local and national levels.
- Supporting Youth Leads: Supporting youth leads across the UK with training, contacts, and resources to help them excel in their role and better support young people.
- Creating opportunities for influence: Creating meaningful opportunities for young people to share their views and shape decision-making.
- Collaborating externally: Working with other youth organisations, their youth teams, and representatives to strengthen youth voice and collaboration.
- Developing programmes and resources: Developing programmes and resources that support young people to build skills throughout their Scouting journey, focused on the areas young people want to learn about.
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There’s also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
- Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you will have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help.
Planning and setting up this activity
- For this activity, you will need to print or write out the card resources.
- If there are more young people than cards, you can print more than one deck. There needs to be one card per young person. Repetition of the same card is fine for this activity.
Running this activity
- Gather everyone and ask them what they know about youth opportunities in Scouts? They can include section participation, youth-led programmes, and leadership roles such as Patrol Leader, Young Leader, District Youth Lead, County Youth Lead, and UK Youth Lead.
- Shuffle the card deck and give each participant a card.
- Ask participants to move around and find the matching card. If multiple people have the same card, they can form a small group.
- Once everyone is paired or has found a small group, ask them to discuss; why this role might exist? Why would someone want to take on this role? How could the person in this role make a difference?
- Ask one person from each group to represent their role and stand in a line.
- The rest of the group gives instructions to move people up or down the line according to influence:
- Top of the line: Roles with a more direct influence but impact fewer young people.
- Bottom of the line: Roles with the most influence affecting more young people.
- As a whole group discuss why they think the order is as it is and what are the differences between the roles?
Wear the UK Youth Team Necker
- Split everyone into 5 groups, with one person in each group taking on a UK Youth Leadership role as the leader.
- Each group will look at one area of the UK Youth Team’s work and create a proposal explaining why this area is important, what is going well, and what more can be done:
- Representing young people
- Supporting Youth Leads
- Creating opportunities for influence
- Collaborating externally
- Developing programmes and resources
- Give everyone enough time to plan their proposal. Once complete or when time is up, come back together.
- The leaders from each team should form a panel to discuss the proposals. Anyone can ask questions for clarification.
- The UK Youth Team should then prioritise actions and decide which proposals should be recommended first and which people may need to be notified or involved.
- Other participants can act as advisers or supporting youth leads.
- As a group, discuss:
- How did it feel to make decisions affecting young people nationally?
- What skills were needed (listening, leadership, decision-making, advocacy)?
- How does the UK Youth Lead role differ from other youth roles in Scouts?
- What impact can this role have on young people’s Scouting experiences?
- Representing young people:
- Think about how young people attend bigger meetings to ensure their voices are heard by the right people, and how they take part in big events so young people are visible.
- Supporting Youth Leads:
- Think about what support Youth Leads receive, such as training, events, advice, resources, and a network of other young people in the same role.
- Creating opportunities for influence:
- Think about chances to lead projects, run events, and give feedback, for example through UK Youth Forums or strategy consultations.
- Collaborating externally:
- Think about working with other youth groups, community projects, or organisations to share ideas and strengthen youth voice.
- Developing programmes and resources:
- Think about badges, activities, and programmes, such as the Youth-Shaped Award, that help young people build skills and shape their Scouting journey.
Card match
- Patrol Leader - Leads a small group of Scouts during meetings and activities. Helps organise tasks and makes sure everyone has a say.
- Young Leader - An older Scout who supports younger sections in running activities. Guides and mentors while developing leadership skills.
- District Youth Lead - Supports youth voice across the local district. Helps young people influence decisions and lead projects locally.
- County Youth Lead - Coordinates youth representation at county level. Supports district youth leads and ensures youth opinions are heard broadly.
- UK Youth Lead - Supports youth voice across the UK at a national level. Provides guidance, resources, and training for local and county youth leads.
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Line Answers
Roles with a more direct influence but for fewer young people.
- Patrol Leader
- Young Leader
- District Youth Lead
- County Youth Lead
- UK Youth Lead
Roles with the most influence for more young people.
Reflection
In this activity, you got to try out different youth leadership roles in Scouts, including being part of the UK Youth Team. You worked together, shared ideas, and made decisions that could affect other young people. It helped you build skills, see how youth voice matters, and feel confident leading.
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.
You must run your activities in line with the Safeguarding Code of Conduct for Adults (Yellow Card) and report any concerns to the UK HQ Safeguarding Team.
- Scissors
Supervise young people appropriately when they’re using scissors. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.
- To make this easier, you could reduce the number of roles or themes participants need to discuss or prioritise or allow small groups to work together rather than individually.
- To make this harder, you could ask participants to create proposals from scratch without examples or have multiple UK Youth Leads or advisers with conflicting opinions, requiring negotiation and consensus.
- Allow participants who are less confident to work in pairs or small groups rather than speaking alone.
- Offer observer or note-taker roles for participants who prefer to contribute indirectly, such as recording ideas, timing presentations, or summarising proposals.
- Break down tasks into smaller steps, for example: “Identify the problem, suggest a solution, and consider the skills that young people could gain.”
- Encourage participants to rotate roles, giving everyone the chance to both present ideas and support others.
- Allow longer discussion or reflection time for participants who need extra time to formulate their ideas.
- Encourage participants to use different communication styles, such as writing ideas down, drawing diagrams, or speaking, depending on what feels most comfortable.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
If you enjoyed this activity, you could try the YouShaped Award.
You could let young people choose roles, create proposals, and decide how to present ideas. Encourage reflection and peer-led discussion. By giving them choice and responsibility, the activity becomes flexible, inclusive, and owned by participants, helping them feel confident, empowered, and motivated in youth leadership.