Youth Commissioners
Sections
- Squirrels
- Beaver Scouts
- Cub Scouts
- Scouts
- Explorers
- Scout Network
- Active Support
- Adult Training
- International
- Youth Commissioners
Welcome to the County Youth page, here we will let you know whats going on around the county with regards to youth involvement in the sections, activities to make your nights more YouthLed, and ways to help us reach the new targets set out by HQ and the County Commissioner.
First off I’d like to introduce the Youth Team, we are a team made up of Under 25’s from each district across the county and led by the County Youth Commissioner. We now have a Youth Commissioner working in almost every district across East Sussex and we are here to help you develop your programme further and work out ways to make your sections wildest dreams come true.
Our slogan for Youth Commissioners is ‘Youth Shaped Scouting’ and although this is a fairly new tag line, the ideas behind it date back to when Baden-Powell first started Scouts, if you were ever a Lodge Leader, Sixer, Patrol Leader, Explorer/network or rover rep then you would have been an advocate for Youth Shaped scouting.
It is basically all about valuing the opinions of young people and empowering them to shape their own programme. As a Youth Commissioner it is our role to provide feedback to the district team and advise the county team which way they need to be aiming to ensure that the county is being run for the young people in partnership with adults. We are here to aid both the young people in your sections and their leaders to embed Youth Shaped Scouting into their every week programme. This could be accomplished either by simply running a forum for each section or by getting a young person in your section to run an entire evening each term.
Why is Youth Shaped Scouting important?
Young people should be actively involved in every aspect of scouting which in turn allows the movement to continue to grow and meet the needs of the young people. This will of course vary from district to district but it in turn helps leaders to keep their section growing and interesting. Until we ask the young people what they want we have no idea what activities to run or what badges to work towards. This can be done in various ways and we will be uploading the facebook page and sharing it to here to help you run activities in your section to help your young people to influence the way you do scouting.
Climbing wall of youth involvement
A tool for checking how ‘Youth Shaped’ your section is using the ‘Climbing Wall of Youth Involvement’ it has been created to assist the development of youth engagement in scouting and identifies seven steps for youth involvement.
The wall is not designed to be a ‘We have reached this level we forever be on this level, it is designed to be a fluid movement depending on the activity/event and will vary when older members of your section leave and newer members arrive. An Example of this (Cubs) would be when a new member joins your section, they will need more guidance for perhaps planning a camp so will be at a lower level in the wall and as your young people begin to use their initiative more for future events then your section will move up the wall but then when these members move and new ones come up the process starts again.
An example of results from a planning night may be: If a leader runs a planning evening and an activity for the programme is mutually agreed between leaders and cubs then this will put your section at a level 6. However, if the cubs gave their views on what they would like to do and these views are adult-made decisions about the content of the programme for example a planning meeting away from the pack then your section would be at level 5.
But remember, you do not always have to be sat at level 7 and in fact some sections may never achieve a level 7 for example a beaver colony is more likely to sit at level 5/6 whereas an Explorer or network section should be sat above level 5 and should aspire to maintain level 7.
Download the Climbing wall of youth involvement and the Climbing Wall Handout.
Latest Youth Commissioner News
CYC Interview
We are passionate about youth involvement and whilst we were looking for our current County Youth Commissioner, Gabe, we asked the outgoing commissioner, Jodie, some questions about the role and her time as the CYC!
If you're interested in youth involvement becoming our next County Youth Commissioner or District Youth Commissioner in the future then email
Or check out our recruit section!
