Explorers Community Engagaement Challenge Award Badge

The Community Engagement Challenge Award is all about being an active member of your community and engaging with your fellow citizens. Think about how you can really engage with members of your local community to make it an even better place to be.

Whether it’s fundraising for a local cause, improving areas in your local environment, running classes at a community centre, or putting on a celebration event for local heroes, use this Challenge Award to help you get there.

How to earn your badge:

1. Choose an appropriate challenge. It should fit the theme of this Challenge Award and should be achieved within 6 months of starting.

2. Use these six ‘Experience Principles’ to plan how you will complete your challenge. You should do something within each principle.

   Create - Bring something into existence
   Mobilise - Bring others together
   Reflect - Know and care for yourself
   Solve - Fix a problem
   Discover - Learn something new
   Experience - Try something out

3. Record your progress and achievements in whatever way you want to.

4. Share your evidence with your Leaders or fellow Explorers to demonstrate how you engaged with the Challenge Award theme through the six “Experience Principles”.

   Tips

   • Safety fundamentals for Explorers to consider
   • • When taking part in any activity, remember to let someone know-
     • • Where you’re going.
       • Who you’re with.
       • What time you plan to start and finished.
       • A plan for communicating your progress.
       • Ask for help if you're visiting new places or trying new activities.
     • When volunteering with unfamiliar teams, make sure you have a key contact person to liaise with and understand what to do if you feel unsafe or uncertain.
     • When mobilising in social action locally, consider everyone's safety and delegate tasks accordingly, especially in unfamiliar areas or locations.
     • Have a clear plan and risk assessment for your activities.
     • When planning creative projects, consider both how to complete your creations safely as well as the safety of the end user.
   • Safety essentials for volunteers or responsible adults to manage activities safely
   • • All activities for this badge must be safely managed and have local approval.
     • All activities must have a thoroughrisk assessmentand make sure it is shared.
     • Use thesafety checklistandactivity guidanceto help you plan and risk assess the activity.
   • Example challenges
   • • Complete your Community Impact Stage 4 activity badge; or help a younger section achieve one of the Community Impact stages
     • Design an app or similar digital mechanism that can help young people to engage with their community
     • Complete one of the Earth Tribe awards
     • Volunteer at a local community centre – you could help run some classes, help at reception, clean the centre or anything else that would benefit the community
     • Fundraise for a cause that is important to you
     • Learn about Politics in the UK, take part in Parliament week and share what you’ve learnt with your Explorer unit
     • Take part in a series of Community events to bring people together and promote Scouting – the events should be a mix of things such as: St George’s day, taking part in a litter pick, handing out water at the local marathon etc
     • Think about how we can make our local community more accessible and inclusive; you could work with your school or local library to take an accessibility audit and action improvement suggestions, or run events to improve people’s mental health such as running a “pets as therapy” event
     • Learn about ways to stay safe on the internet and run a session for your Explorer Unit or a younger section to help them achieve a stage of the Digital Citizen staged activity badge