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
Find out about the future of the Wood Badge and how completing it will become optional
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The Wood Badge is an international award dating back to 1919. It shows a volunteer's personal commitment to learning and development with Scouts.
In our new approach to learning, completing the award will be optional and volunteers can choose to work towards it as part of their ongoing development.
After research and talking to our members, we are re-developing what the award should look like today and plan to release a new Wood Badge framework in the future.
When the My Learning digital tool launches, the new Wood Badge framework won’t be available. However, we’ll continue to deliver the current Wood Badge, with some changes.
If you‘re in the middle of working towards a Wood Badge when the new digital tools go live:
As part of our new approach to learning, there'll no longer be a system for multiple Wood Badges for each of your roles. But if you’ve already got more than one, they’ll carry across and show as awards on your record.
Moving forwards you'll only be able to earn one Wood Badge. However, there will two ways of achieving this. One will be focused on helping those delivering our programme. The other will be focused on helping those in a role that involves leading or supporting volunteers.
Anyone can pursue either of these paths to a Wood Badge, and you'll no longer need a Personal Learning Plan developed with a Training Advisor.
You can more detail on the two routes to earning a Wood Badge below:
The content for the Section Wood Badge will be a mixture of Growing Roots learning where relevant and continuing modules from the Adult Training Scheme:
*To gain the Section Wood Badge, you'll still need to do this learning even if you have an automatic sign-off of Growing Roots learning on joining the new digital system.
The content for the Managers and Supporters Wood Badge will be a mixture of Growing Roots learning where relevant and continuing modules from the Adult Training Scheme:
*To gain the Managers and Supporters Wood Badge, you'll still need to do this learning even if you have an automatic sign-off of Growing Roots learning on joining the new digital system.
Growing Roots
Find out about the learning you have to do as a volunteer new to a role and what this will mean for current volunteers.
Find out more about Growing Roots