Today, we announce a 6% growth in young people (4–18 years old) compared to 2022 are taking part in Scouts across West Lancashire, exceeding our target of 4%. We continue to bounce back and recover from the pandemic, as reflected in our membership figures, as 584 more young people are accessing Scouting now compared to last year.
Fast forward to today, and our massive rise in youth membership is thanks to amazing efforts from all our volunteers to get young people to meet and enjoy the varied programmes and opportunities to enable our members to learn valuable skills for life.
Today’s news is a big positive step in our journey to recover our membership numbers from the effect of the pandemic. There’s still a long way to go to help ensure we’re offering all young people in West Lancashire who want to join Scouts the fun, adventure, and skills they need for later life.
What does this mean in numbers:
- We’ve seen an increase in members from Black and Minority Ethnic Backgrounds and members with additional needs and disabilities.
- We’ve enjoyed 23 years of growth in our female membership.
- We opened 17 new Squirrel Sections for our 4- to 6-year-olds, with 30 sections planned to open by the end of 2023.
This rapid growth underlines the huge popularity of our Squirrels programme among young families since we launched to help young people gain skills for life at a time when it matters most and where it’s most needed.
- Our young people enjoyed 32,607 nights away from home this year. A massive increase of 24,931 from the previous year.
- 423 14–18-year-olds volunteered as part of our young leader’s scheme, supporting young people in our youngest sections and developing as the leaders of today and the future.
- The number of frontline adult leaders has grown by 4% (3,457) from 2022 (that’s Section Leaders, Assistant Section Leaders, and Section Assistants).
While we’re proud of the growth we’ve achieved so far, we want to do more to ensure Scouts is as accessible and inclusive as possible. By inclusive growth, we specifically mean starting Scouts in areas we’ve not been before and working with communities so we can learn how Scouts can change and adapt to meet the needs of the people we serve. We’re not stopping until every young person who wants to join, enjoy, and thrive in Scouts.
Craig Dewar-Willox said: “We’ve made huge progress. The achievements shows Scouts is more relvant and needed in our local communities than ever before! All of this wouldn’t be possible without our amazing volunteers, who give up their time to enable our young people. Volunteering with Scouts is very rewarding, fun and good for you. For anyone wanting to meet new people and learn new skills, I’d encourage you to volunteer with the Scouts.
Whatever you want to do we have a volunteering role for you.”
Supporting our members to recruit more volunteers
There’s a number of ways to get support in recruiting new adults, such as:
- Attending our volunteer recruitment workshop – an online webinar series designed to help you from the start of your recruitment journey to the end. The series looks at preparing to recruit, making the ask and what to do once they’re ready to start. You can sign up online.
- Try out a #GoodforTwo programme – a new way to encourage adult volunteers to bring friends along to Scouts to give it a try. It’s a tried and tested method for young people, so why not give it a go with your friends?
- Using ready-made resources to help you to grow Scouts – we’ve got a range of tips and tools to help you reach out to new volunteers, returning volunteers, young people and to help you connect with your community. Find out more on the ‘Growing Scouts’ pages.
Today’s news is a big positive step in our journey to recover our membership numbers from the effect of the pandemic. There’s still a long way to go to help make sure we’re offering all young people who want to join Scouts the fun, adventure and skills they need for later in life.
As always none of this would be possible without the efforts of our amazing volunteers – thank you for all you continue to do.
Those interested in learning more about volunteering for the Scouts or joining as a volunteer can find out more here.