Dear Members,

Firstly, I want to say a huge thank-you to all of the leaders continuing to deliver Scouting to young people during the suspension of face-to-face meetings. I have seen a range of different activities, all providing Skills for Life during this challenging time.

We have created VIRTUAL AT HOME CHALLENGE BADGES for Beavers, Cubs and Scouts to support you in ensuring young people have the opportunity to work towards their Chief Scout Award. These badges are made up of requirements that can be completed at home from the existing challenge badges. These badges are optional, and we will create a certificate for you to download and present to young people to congratulate them for their efforts when the suspension of face-to-face meetings is lifted.

We continue to encourage the use of Online Scout Manager and have uploaded these badges to use with their Badges at Home function. We have put together a guide for adding these badges to Online Scout Manager for your section, available in the useful documents section below, alongside a parent introduction to Badges at Home.

When a requirement is met for the At Home Challenge Badge, it will automatically mark it complete on the existing challenge badge the requirement is from.

Useful Documents
At Home Challenge Badge Requirements  – Beavers
At Home Challenge Badges Requirements – Cubs
At Home Challenge Badges Requirements – Scouts
A guide to adding these badges to OSM for your section
A parent introduction to Badges at Home

These challenge badges will be extended to our neighbours in Greater Manchester North and Greater Manchester East to ensure that young people across Greater Manchester can work towards completing their Top Awards at this unprecedented time.

I would like give a special thanks to the Programme Team for putting together the requirements, County OSM champion for his continued technical support and to the young people in our County who inspired and designed these challenge badges.

Where possible, please take some time over the Easter weekend, at home to relax and enjoy the sunshine after a challenging couple of weeks. Thank-you again for delivering amazing programmes to the young people across Greater Manchester West!

Kind Regards,

Jacob

Jacob Bond
Deputy County Commissioner (Programme)