Friendship Award
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The Friendship Award aims to encourage your members to get their friends to join the adventure of scouting. It can be gained by everyone in your group or unit.
The principle is simple:
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bring a friend along to your weekly section meeting
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Introduce them to other members of your section
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help them to become familiar with what scouting is about, its traditions and history and understand the Promise and Law (appropriate to the section)
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support them at their investiture
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receive your friendship badge during your friend’s investiture into the section
Over their introductory period and up until they are invested you will need to support your friend in learning to become a member of your Scout Group or Explorer Scout or Network Unit.
The Friendship Award can only be gained by introducing someone who is completely new to scouting. You cannot gain the award for supporting someone moving into your section from the younger section.
Young people can gain a Friendship Award for each friend they introduce into your section (we have four versions of the award available).
You could run a competition in your group or unit for the number of badges gained in a year!
The badge can only be awarded for the introduction of new members, not as a reward for acting as a 'buddy' to a young person moving from the section below.
If a young person has reintroduced a friend (who has previously been a member) to scouting after an absence of three or more months a Friendship Award badge may be awarded.
There are four friendship badges available for young people to earn. The badges are the same for all section, but cannot be transferred from section to section.
Where are the badges worn?
Young people…
The badges are worn on the left amongst the activity badges that the young person has earned. As each Friendship Award is gained they should form a diamond shape on the sleeve.
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Bring a friend evening
A bring a friend evening is the ideal tool for your group or unit to recruit young people or to open more sections.
The idea is that all the young people are given the opportunity to invite a friend along to participate in a normal meeting of your colony, pack, troop or unit.
Encourage your members to get involved and spend a meeting making personal invitations for them to pass on to their friends.
On the evening, it is important that the activities you choose to run are easily accessible for those who are not currently members. Consider activities such as rocket building, games nights or an evening of different activity bases.
As young people leave the meeting, it’s the ideal time to offer them the opportunity to join your scout group. Encourage parents to attend some of the meeting, so you can meet them and tell them more about scouting. Remember that the parents of new young people in scouting are potential adult volunteers.