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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

Raspberry Pi

Our partnership with Raspberry Pi will help young people develop skills in problem-solving, resilience and creativity, alongside key digital skills essential for today and tomorrow.

Raspberry Pi are passionate about inspiring and supporting your interest in digital making.

Sharing their skills and knowledge, Raspberry Pi will support you to develop your digital making skills. Making things with technology can help young people learn how to solve problems, build resilience, help their communities and express themselves.

Raspberry Pi has created a suite of resources to guide you through digital making.

Upcoming 'Train the Trainer' events

Scout leaders are invited to join RaspberryPi for a "Getting Started with the Digital Maker Badge" session, focussed on how to deliver stages 1 and 2, the resources available, and a Q&A for anything you'd like to ask.

When:  Wednesday 03 April (postponed from 27 March), Wednesday 24 April 
Timings:  7pm to 8pm
Register interest here: scouts@raspberrypi.org 

Please check back here for more opportunities throughout 2024!

(Please note: these sections are for leaders rather than young people)

Leader training livestream

To watch in full screen, double click the video

Badge and resources

We have been working hard to make sure that the badge is relevant and accessible. The activities presented here are relevant to scouting, and we will continue to release new activities that support the badge over the coming months. We are working to make the Digital Maker Staged Activity Badge accessible by providing every scout leader with the confidence, support, and kit that enables you to offer the badge to your young people.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is committed to making the Digital Maker Staged Activity badge accessible, so you are able to complete the majority of our recommended resources using any desktop or laptop computer and without any specialist equipment (e.g. Raspberry Pi computers).
You are also able to complete our "unplugged" resources without using any technology at all.

Keen to get stuck in? Check out the activities below

Digital Maker Activity Badges (Raspberry Pi)

Get your badges at Scout Store

Alternative ways to access equipment

If your group doesn't have access to Raspberry Pis or any of the kit needed to run the activities there are a number of places you can speak to:

  • schools and libraries - your local school or library may have a computer suite you can take your group to, or equipment you can borrow.
  • Code Club and CoderDojo - these free local programming clubs already work with Scout groups across the UK to help run the Digital Maker programme.

These are great ways to run activities and get young people engaged in digital making. 

Activities for Digital Maker Stage 1

Activities for Digital Maker Stage 2

Activities for Digital Maker Stage 3

Activities for Digital Maker Stage 4

Activities for Digital Maker Stage 5 

Information packs

A lot of our activities use Scratch,  a programming, or coding, tool designed for children. You can use it to create games, stories and animations and program with art, music and sound. If you don’t have access to the internet in your meeting place, you’ll need to do a small amount of preparation with the laptops you’ll be using. Full instructions are included in each activity, but you need to download Scratch from the Scratch download page.

You can read more about Scratch in this quick guide, but the best way to understand it is to try it!

Stage 2 and 3 introduce the use of Micro:bit for several activities, you can read this short guide for help!

Here is a guide to help you to use a Raspberry Pi.

We have a lot more planned for our partnership with the Scout Association, including supporting leaders at events, finding more ways to help you all get access to exciting kit, and building confidence with specialist volunteers.

If there are any questions in the meantime, please email scouts@raspberrypi.org.

About Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi Foundation works to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world. Making things with technology can help young people learn how to solve problems, build resilience, help their communities and express themselves. The Raspberry Pi Foundation now runs the world’s largest network of volunteer-led computing clubs (Code Clubs and CoderDojos) and creates free educational resources that are used by millions of young people all over the world to learn how to create with digital technologies.