Neighbourhood mapping
Have a look around your neighbourhood, find out what makes it nice and what could be improve, and start thinking about how you can make it better with small actions.
For this activity you will need:
- Big pieces of paper
- Markers
- Stickers to mark the nice places and the places to improve
In groups of three, Scouts walk around the neighbourhood, or in a small park or the yard of their meeting place for younger sections. Their task will be to draw a map of the place. They need to draw the map, but also add the different features of the neighbourhood, such as playgrounds, public transports, a park, benches, bins, roads, if there is a park, etc.
When they are done drawing the maps, they will need to mark different places:
- The places that they really like, the places that feel nice and welcoming
- The places that they like less, that are less welcoming
In a wider group discussion, they talk about what makes those different places nice or not.
Going back in their small group, they need to find ideas to make the “less nice” places nicer, more like the places that they like. Their leaders encourage them to think about all kinds of solutions:
- Very small things that anyone can easily do so those places are just a little bit nicer
- The bigger ideas like “build a whole new neighbourhood”.
- Any idea for a solution is a good idea, no matter how small or how big it is.
As an extra, if the group is connecting with another scout group during the JOTA-JOTI, they could share their maps (be careful that there is no personal or identifiable information) with the other groups to show their scouting environment and talk about the things they want to improve.
- Do the mapping of your neighbourhood or area by yourself.
- Then, connect with other scouts in JOTA-JOTI to discuss the places that you really like and those you don't. The Scouts you will talk to will not know your neighbourhood, so you will have to explain them well what it looks like and what you feel.
- You can find together the potential solutions, and those solutions will come for a wide variety of cultural contexts, making them even richer.
This activity should help the scouts realise that creating a good environment and a pleasant community is in the hands of everyone, and does not need to be overly complicated, they can do it at their scale. By thinking about small improvements as well as bigger changes, they understand that a problem can be broken down and tackle little by little.
Challenge Code