The Scout Gold Award is typically completed by Scouts before they move on to explorers. In make up it is consistent with the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award and is often recognized by the D of E system. Each year we have a small handful of scouts who have completed the necessary components, typically a year ahead of the Bronze D of E award is undertaken.
Scouts taking part manage their progress through the different elements with guidance from the scout leaders. Some of the skills activities are typically undertaken outside of the regular scouting sessions. We cover a large part of the outdoors challenge award at our annual summer and winter camps. We also help to create some of the volunteering opportunities although some of these must be organised by the individual themselves.
There are two parts to the award.
Part One: Earn six Activity or Staged Activity badges.
They could be badges gained outside of normal meetings or ones achieved through the Thursday evening programme.
Scouts will earn a number of Activity and Staged Activity badges by participating fully in the troop programme: Nautical Skills, Time on Water, Nights Away, Swimming, First Aid, Sailing and Paddle Sports. In theory most Scouts will therefore meet the requirement through Thursday evening meeting attendance. However, the Leaders would like our Scouts to individually work towards at least one Activity or Staged badge on their own. As well as doing badges that match hobbies or interest there is the option to do badges based on school work, such as art or DT. All badge information can be found on the main Scouts website: https://www.scouts.org.uk/scouts/activity-badges/
Part two: Complete the nine Challenge Awards
Most elements of most of the Challenge Awards will be completed during the three year programme, but in order to complete them all Scouts will need to attend weekend and camp activities. Some individual work will be required as well. The badge requirements for the Challenge Awards can be found on the main Scouts website but are also reproduced in the 3 Year Plan document below which covers how we intend to cover the badge work in the normal course of events.
Expedition
Part of the award involves an expedition which takes place over two days and requires the scouts to plan and walk a 10km hike on each day. The Scouts camp overnight under the provisions of an activity passport which allows them to camp unsupervised overnight although the leaders camp adjacent to be on hand for any disasters. The Scouts plan the route, plan their food and cook and clean up themselves. June typically sees a bunch of 4th EFS Scouts, armed with food, equipment and routes of their own choosing navigating Epping Forest under the provision of a Scout overnight passport which allows the Scouts to be independent of the Scout leaders (although we do track them at defined checkpoints on the route and at the overnight camp location)