The Scout Association has teamed up with the Canal & River Trust as part of an initiative called A Million Hands which aims to get 500,000 Scouts to work with major charities across the UK to improve people’s lives.
Every Scout group in the country is being encouraged to make a pledge on how its members will take action on a series of issues including improving family resilience and the lives of those affected by dementia or physical disabilities. One of the ways they will do this is by working with CRT to adopt a stretch of their local canal and making improvements focused on aiding the health and wellbeing of the community that uses the waterway.
The Scouts themselves chose CRT: as Chief Scout Bear Grylls put it, “water has an amazing effect on people – it connects us to nature and speaks to something deeply elemental inside us”. He believed that in turn, the Scouts involved would “develop a lifelong love and respect for our canals and waterways”.
