10 minute read
Scouting for all
LONG-TERM GOOD IN VULNERABLE AREAS
In Stockholm county around 90,000 children and young people live in socioeconomically vulnerable areas. Surveys show that they are the ones with most to gain from Scouting – but they are also the hardest to reach. In ‘Scouting for all’ the Scouts are implementing four school and leisure initiatives to make outdoor life more accessible and reduce exclusion.
The Scouts are a movement that has been around for a long time. Many people have heard of you, but perhaps they don’t know much about what you do these days. How would you describe it?
Membership development manager Elisabeth Danefjäll: We work with children and young people, mainly aged 7 to 25. Here in the Nordics many people probably associate Scouting with the outdoor life: sleeping under canvas and going to Scout camps. And yes, we do that – but the purpose of it all is for children and young people to learn leadership skills, to act as a group and to dare to test their limits. Scouting gives them tools, values, courage and the ability to act so that they can go out and change the world, in both big things and small. In our vision we refer to young people becoming ‘world improvers’.
Emma Berggren, project manager for ‘Own your nature’: Another important thing is that there really is room for everyone in our organisation and in the activities we do. Scouting covers a vast arena. Compare it with playing football, for example, where you have to be good at one thing, i.e. football. In the Scouts you don’t have to be good at a specific thing in order to fit in. We do so much. There’s always something you can be good at with us. That’s hugely important, and really good.
Elisabeth: Also, Scouting is global. There are 60 million Scouts in the world. That creates a feeling of belonging. So in addition to the individual perspective, there is also a social perspective. I would say that the Scouts help to build up and maintain democratic, peaceful communities. With all the currents that exist today, we are more relevant than ever.
Tell us about the project ‘Scouting for all’. What’s the idea behind it?
Elisabeth: It’s clearly linked to both these perspectives; the individual and the overall social perspective. For us it’s important to be there for all children and young people in Sweden. At the same time, we’ve noticed that we are still more of a presence in the places where the usual traditional clubs and associations are established.
It’s not so easy to find us in vulnerable areas. So if the children aren’t coming to Scouts, then we’ll go to the children. That’s why we’re now going to them in schools, because all children are there.
Emma: We started in Husby, with two schools. We would rather concentrate our efforts on one place than dabble a bit here and there. It’s vitally important that we don’t just go there but that we stay there for the children and young people who we have actually engaged. Naturally we hope to be able to spread this to more places. We already have an entry into another school in an area where the Scouts have found it hard to recruit and we hope to start working with that in the next step.
“Be prepared!” In the Scouts everyone can contribute. Left: Emma Berggren, project manager for ‘Own your nature’, provides guidance.
Under ‘Scouting for all’ you have two sub-projects. Let’s start with ‘Own your nature’. What’s that all about?
Emma: ‘Own your nature’ is a project we started back in the autumn term of 2019. It started with students in years 4–9 from Akademiska skolan and Fryshuset
elementary school in the west of Husby being able to choose Scouting as an ‘elective’ activity during lesson time. We were also able to hold outdoor days, campouts and family excursions. It went really well and the results were great. Then we also started working with Husbygård school and municipal leisure services in Rinkeby-Kista. Last autumn we also began inviting pupils in years 2–6 who go to Husbygård school’s after-school activities.
It’s sounds like it all gone really well so far?
Elisabeth: Yes, definitely! Nine out of ten feel taking part in Scouting activities has been helpful, that it’s been fun to try new things and that they’ve got better at working with others. Eight out of ten feel safer in nature and have more confidence in their ability to cope with things.
I assume that many of these children’s parents grew up in other countries. Are many of them familiar with the Scouts from their own childhood?
Emma: Sometimes they are, sometimes not. I’ve met lots of parents who talk about Scouting and tell us they were Scouts when they were younger. But there are also many who don’t know the Scouts at all. When I was at an activity day in the main square in Rinkeby lots of people came to see what was going on – both children and adults. The parents see pretty quickly that it seems good for the children, but they don’t really know who we are. And even if some of them have seen the North Järva Scout group at Husby Gård, they may not have thought about whether it might be something for them, that they would be welcome too. I think that’s the real problem.
Elisabeth: Yes. We haven’t measured this. What we do know is that more than 81 percent of everyone in Sweden has heard of the Scouts. But we have noticed that awareness is definitely lower in Husby.
Tell us about the second sub-project, ‘Daycamp adventure’. What’s that?
Elisabeth: It’s a project in which we’re offering 20 young people in the same area a summer job for three weeks. The first week consists of leadership training. They then spend two weeks working as leaders at Scout camps. During their training week they complete a basic course in how to be a good Scout leader. They’ll be given specific tools and we’ll talk a great deal about the role of leader – for example, that as a leader you are often an important role model for younger children. In the second and third weeks they work with the children that Emma has got to know in the school project, the school’s leisure activities and at Scout daycamps. I think it’s enormously valuable for a young person to find out that there are people who believe in them, that they have the capacity to cope with leading maybe 20 children in games and Scouting activities.
How did the idea come about?
Elisabeth: It comes from the young people themselves, from those who have met us during the two years that ‘Scouting for all’ has been running. We haven’t offered holiday jobs before. But why not? ‘Daycamp adventure’ is a way of testing how the Scouts can find more ways to reach children and young people.
Emma: There’s another important aspect too. Quite a lot of organisations and businesses go into
vulnerable areas. They do something for a short time, but very quickly disappear again. The children get quite a lot, but it’s also taken away from them. I personally thought that was a very tough thing to experience. I want the Scouts to do good in the long term. I feel enormous pride in the fact that the Scouts actually listened to that, that lots of us want to make this part of our usual activities.
Also, Elisabeth and I are employees, but most Scout work is built on volunteering. Working with children and young people is hugely rewarding and energising, but it’s also extremely demanding. Everyone who volunteers for the Scouts really deserves praise. Without them, the Scouts wouldn’t exist.
What has the donation from the Erling-Persson Foundation meant to the Scouts and to ‘Scouting for all’?
Emma: Security! It feels really nice. Lots of young people ask me about things they want to do. But many are also afraid that I’ll leave and the Scouts will disappear again. They’re so used to people coming and going. Now it feels really good to be able to say that we’re here to stay, for a long time.
Elisabeth: It allows us to do all this that we’ve talked about. But it also gives us the time and space to explore more ways of working together.
Emma: The funding means we can also employ another person who will work on ‘Daycamp adventure’. That is enormously pleasing. Now we’ll be able to try new things that include more target groups.
If we were to travel forward 10 years in time, what would you hope to see in Husby then?
Emma: By then ‘my’ children will be grown up and might have children of their own. I hope that by then they’ll think it perfectly natural to get out into nature. Not strange or dangerous, as it might have felt before the Scouts came here.
Elisabeth: I think our preventive work has made a big difference. There are many forces pushing and pulling on these young people, not all of which are good. I think some have been brave enough to withstand them because they were able to talk to Emma, for example – conversations that they wouldn’t have dared have with anyone else. Of course, I don’t think it’s all down to the Scouts. It’s the combined effect of all the clubs and so on that exist.
How do you see the Scouts’ role in the future, overall?
Elisabeth: The next thing to work on for the whole community must be children’s and young people’s mental wellbeing. We all need to take responsibility and the traditional clubs and the Scouts have an important role to play in this. I often meet people from what is frequently referred to as the first line – organisations such as BRIS, Friends and the like, who the children can call when they have problems. They say ‘Oh, the Scouts – you’re there even before the first line. You’re there for these children every day, creating security’.
I think of all the summer camps where I’ve often stood in the kitchen peeling potatoes with different children. Some of them might have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. I think of children who on the first day of camp are a little hesitant and don’t really find their place. Then, after a week there, you just see that the child is joining in and it’s all so natural. It’s that feeling of understanding that we’re all different, but that everyone can contribute. It’s a fantastic feeling.
76,000
The number of Scout members in Sweden. The Scouts are active in 220 of the country’s 290 municipalities.
8
Many joined the Scouts during the pandemic. In 2020 the Scouts in Sweden gained eight new members a day. During the pandemic lots of people were out in nature much more than usual. Interest in nature has increased.
1,000
The Scouts are a nationwide organisation of more than 1,000 Scout troops with an active offering for children and young people – from Gällivare in the north to Trelleborg in the south.
ABOUT THE PROJECT Recipient: Scouts
Title: ‘Scouting for all’, including sub-projects ‘Own your nature’ and ‘Daycamp adventure’.
What it involves: Reaching out into socioeconomically vulnerable areas, with new groups of children and young people and their parents. ‘Own your nature’ offers Scouting activities during school term time. ‘Daycamp adventure’ offers young people training in leadership followed by a holiday job as a Scout leader at Scout day camps, where they can become positive role models for younger children in the area.
Funding: The Erling-Persson Foundation is supporting the project with a total of SEK 4.73 million over three years.
