Community badge
Scout proficiency badge

Community

Serve your community: study a local concern, help people with disabilities, or learn how the police prevent and detect crime.

  • Service
  • Syllabus page 13

What you need to do

To gain the badge you must pass all the requirements in one of the following alternatives:

Community services

  1. Find out about local community services (for example health, education, leisure, social) using such resources as the local authority, youth officer and local library. Discuss with the Unit Leader, before going for the test to the examiner, how these services meet the needs of the members of the community.
  2. Carry out a study of one aspect of community concern in your area, after consulting the Patrol Leaders' Council and Scout Leader. The study should be of approximately six months' duration, and could include the old, the young, the disabled, the lonely or the unemployed.
  3. Take a regular part in a form of service to the community, spread over at least two months. Explain to the Patrol Leaders' Council what you have learned from this experience of social involvement. You must discuss this option with the examiner before undertaking any of the requirements.

People with disabilities

  1. With a friend, push and be pushed in a wheelchair around your neighborhood, visiting shops and buildings. Describe your experience to the examiner.
  2. Show how to open and close a wheelchair properly and how to take it up and down curbs, down a slope and up and down stairs.
  3. Demonstrate the techniques of lifting someone who has a weakness in the legs and of transferring them from one chair to another.
  4. Assemble a display of not less than eight items of aids used by people with handicaps. Explain to your Patrol and the examiner how these items are used.
  5. Learn the following Makaton phrases: Hello, Please, Thank you, Friend, Help, Home, Tired, Eat, Drink, Yes, No, O.K., Wash, Toilet and Good-bye. Help to make a handicapped awareness trail for the Scouts in your Patrol. You should take part in it. Tell your examiner about it.
  6. Spend a total of 15 hours within a period of three months either helping in the Hospital, Society for Health Education, Veshi, Fashan or similar, or helping at a special Pack or Troop which caters for Scouts with a handicap.
  7. Help at 3 camps at which there are a number of Cub Scouts to the satisfaction of the Akela, and support your report about the camp with a letter of acknowledgement from the Akela.
  8. Or: any other one activity of a similar nature and level of achievement as agreed by the Patrol Leaders' Council.
  9. Discuss with the Patrol Leaders' Council and with the examiner how you now feel about people with handicaps and how you will behave towards them in the future.

Police and crime prevention

  1. Learn about the local police station and find out about:

    1. The organization of a police force and the rank structure.
    2. The various specialist departments.
    3. Communications including personal radio, emergency system and phonetic alphabet.
    4. The practical side of preventing and detecting crime.
  2. Show an understanding of crime prevention in the home and the community.
  3. Observe a stranger for a period of two minutes and, after a period of time, be able to describe him or her in such a manner as to enable the person to be recognized.
  4. Show a good knowledge of the Highway Code.
  5. Take part in a locally organized course as agreed by your Patrol Leaders' Council.