The Social Development Committee ran a series of interactive workshops with the youth of the Catholic Scouts in Haifa, on belonging to a group, social relationships, bullying and exclusion, healthy communication, and responsible leadership. The work follows the approach that runs through our education work: meeting young people inside the frameworks that already hold their trust, rather than asking them to come to us.
The workshops were built as an extension of scouting's own values, cooperation, service, responsibility and belonging, and worked through an interactive method combining movement, educational games, group work and guided discussion. That method gave participants room to reflect on their experience inside the group, on the everyday relationships that build trust or wear it down, and on the part each of them can play in creating a more respectful and inclusive environment.
Across the sessions, participants worked on questions close to their own reality as young people: How do we listen to one another? How do we deal with difference? How do we notice who is left outside the circle? And how do we keep joking, cliques or disagreement from turning into exclusion or harm? The series also opened the question of what leadership means: not control or imposing an opinion, but a responsibility built on listening, support, cooperation, and making room for every member of the group.
The series closed with a space for reflection and evaluation, in which participants named the values and skills they will carry with them into daily life and into their scouting frame: listening, respecting others' feelings, communicating calmly, and refusing mockery, bullying or domination inside the group.
We thank the Catholic Scouts in Haifa and their leaders for their cooperation and trust, and the young people for their engagement. This experience is a first step toward a continuing partnership, one that opens further spaces to support young people and to strengthen belonging, responsibility, and collective work.
