Community Projects

Groups of 12 participants are split at the end of the residential training course into two groups of six who are then, with the skills they have acquired, challenged to complete a community project lasting four to seven months. They then return home, and enter a planning phase where they research their project and its viability, and present their project plan to The Mark Scott Foundation at the Project Forum.

Community Projects Community Projects

Teams have delivered a wide range of community projects including:

A team from St Thomas Aquinas and Hyndland Secondary Schools in Glasgow worked with a VSO, volunteer in South Africa, to supply school children there with cameras.   The school children took and presented photographs which represented scenes in their everyday lives.   The team also worked with school children in Glasgow and provided them with cameras which they used to take photographs of similar themes in their lives.   The team then facilitated contact between the school children in Glasgow and in South Africa to develop relationships between them and their schools.   Additionally, the team mounted an exhibition of photographs comparing life for children in South Africa with similar experiences of children in Glasgow.  The exhibition was displayed in Glasgow Airport for nine months and seen by many passengers and others using the airport.

A team from Clydebank High School, St Andrews High School and St Columbas High School provided activities for patients at the local children’s hospital, Yorkhill, with the theme  "Laughter is the best Medicine".  Part of the project involved spending time in a number of the different outpatient clinics interacting and playing with some of the younger patients.  The team also provided a karaoke evening for some of the older children.

While it is for each team to decide the nature of their community project, participants are given some assistance in selecting their project.   At Loch Eil part of the training allow Outward Bound Metro to work with participants to decide how best to identify a community project.   Outward Bound Metro instructors offer participants guidance selecting a project from one of the following streams:

  • providing a service or improving a facility for the elderly
  • providing a service or improving a facility for disabled people
  • providing a service, training or peer education or improving a facility for young people/children

Project Forum

Project Forums were held in Glasgow and in Edinburgh.   These provided participants with an opportunity to make a humorous short presentation inspired by their residential training at Loch Eil and then to make a short presentation about their community project.   The Project Forum is always a great fun event.