Young Leader Programme
Welcome to 1st Market Bosworth Young Leaders Section!
Once you reached the end of Scouts around 14 years old, you’ll be invited to join the District’s Explorer Unit. Anyone 14-18 years old can join, even if you’ve never been a Scout before. See our page on Explorers for links of how to join.
Explorer Scouts are then invited to be Young Leaders at their local groups. You can choose to support Beavers, Cubs or Scouts sections, and you may be moved between sections to give you lots of experience. This is a role with a lot of responsibility, and you’ll be acting as a leader, assisting with the sessions, planning and delivering the programme with the Adult Leaders rather than just taking part. It’s a very fun and rewarding role!
What’s different from being a Scout?
This is a change from what you are used to. Your Parents/Carers need to support you with setting you up in the District Young Leader programme and help you identify the training and support you in completing your missions. You might still need their help getting to your section meetings every week, especially if you live a distance from our Scout Group.
Our Leaders at 1st Market Bosworth Scout Group are not involved in delivery of Young Leader training, this is done at Young Leader meetings. You’ll then be given tasks to do at the Group level, for example, planning and delivering a session to meet the section’s badge requirements. The Adult Leaders at 1st Market Bosworth will assist you in documenting what you’ve done, so you can prove it to your District Young Leader Training Adviser who then validates (signs off) that part of your training.
To get involved, you’ll need to ask your Parent/Carer to:
- Complete the Young Leader Agreement and
- Agree for us to share your OSM details with District Young Leader Explorer Section
- Take an active role in helping you identify and attend training.
District Young Leader Explorer Section: This is run by volunteers at District, the section often only meets for training sessions.
Training: There maybe only one or two district training sessions a year so it is important that you jump at a chance to attend them when they arise.
Validation: You will need to provide evidence to get your missions completed – this is called Validation. Your missions will be validated by the leader of the District Young Leader Explorer Section, so it’s important you attend these meetings to get the credit you deserve for your hard work!
Young Leader book: You can download the Young Leader book here which explains the training and missions in detail: https://cms.scouts.org.uk/media/12111/esyl-logbook-v3-sept-2019_web.pdf
Young Leader Agreement: With your Parent/Carer, you’ll need to understand and complete the Young Leader agreement https://ashbyandcoalvillescouts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/YL1-Young-Leader-Agreement.pdf
Share OSM details: We’ll need to share via OSM details of all our Young Leaders so they will be invited to via OSM to events for training and validation sessions. Please make sure your Parent/Carer lets your Market Bosworth Scout Group Section Leader know in writing that the information can be shared (so we don’t fall foul of GDPR).
Market Bosworth Scout Group: Our leadership team facilitate Young Leaders attending weekly meetings, events and planning sessions. Our Exec currently support the Young Leaders by paying their Capitation (circa £55 a year) and for us to include “where possible” the cost of trips so events do not cost you any money to attend. This puts our Young Leaders in the same financial position as our volunteer Adult Leaders who attend, and sets the expectation that our Young Leaders “lead” rather than just “take part” as they would have done in Beavers, Cubs and Scouts.
Planning Meetings: We expect that all our Young Leaders be involved in planning and delivery of the programme. The Section’s Adult Leaders really want to incorporate your feedback, especially if you were previously a Scout. Your experience and opinions as a Young Person are so valuable in helping shape and organise our weekly meetings, to prepare a top quality programme for all our Scouts.
Explorers: You can also attend Explorer section meetings which is very similar to Scout Section (just the next level up). This is also run by District and you are eligible to join from 14 years old.
If you have any queries or want to sign up for our Young Leader programme, please contact us.
