Chief Scout Dwayne Fields on empowering Britain's youth – and why kids are coping better than we think

Dwayne Fields has a new job, but he’s not feeling any pressure. The explorer was appointed UK Chief Scout in September 2024, succeeding TV adventurer Bear Grylls, who calls him “an inspiration”. 

Most people would find becoming a mentor to nearly half a million young people – Scouts is the biggest youth organisation in the UK – daunting, but not Fields, who has experienced more than his fair share of testing times. 

“I don’t feel the pressure,” he says. “I have trust and I have a lot of support. I will do absolutely everything I can to live up to all that the role requires, in terms of being a role model.” 

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Role models are vitally important for young people. Austerity-driven cuts to local authority budgets have left youth clubs decimated. In England, the number of local authority-run youth centres dropped from 917 to 427 in a decade with a loss of 4,500 youth worker jobs, according to Unison’s estimates. As more free time is consumed by phones, social media and online networks, which in themselves are all-consuming, young people – especially boys – look to controversial figures such as Andrew Tate, who police have warned is radicalising boys into extreme misogyny in a “quite terrifying” way. 

During last year’s riots, kids as young as 12 were arrested – 147 in total, with 84 being sentenced for causing disorder. A report released last week said they got involved for the “thrill of the moment” with children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza saying that the report “raises some really serious questions about childhood…and why our children feel so disaffected and disempowered”. There is also an ever-growing mental health crisis. The number of children and young people being referred for mental health support in the UK increased by more than 50% since the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022 alone, 1.4 million children were referred to child and adolescent mental health services. 

Scouts can solve plenty of problems – from (responsible) fire-lighting to tying any manner of knots. They might not be able to solve all the big issues facing Britain today, but the connection that groups like Scouts provide can be a game-changer. (Not just for boys either, since 1976 girls have been able to join as well.) The main concern for the movement right now is a need for more volunteers. There are currently more than 100,000 people on their waiting list. But Fields is upbeat. He believes young people are managing the obstacles they face better than many think.  

“They are able to cope with the challenges in society better than we did, and hopefully they’ll make the world a better place. For me, it’s in all our interests to encourage, support, inspire and empower our young people.” 

Growing up, Dwayne Fields had his own challenges to cope with. Aged six, he flew alone from Jamaica to live with his mother in East London. Integrating was difficult, especially at school. As a self-confessed “feral kid” who’d grown up without electricity and spent all his time outdoors, he was never going to make friends by chatting about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles like the rest of his classmates. “I’d never watched TV or known any cartoons so I found it difficult to fit in. I would just say yes and play the games that everyone else played and pretend I liked the things they liked.” 

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It was only when he joined Cubs that he found his tribe. “It was the first time since arriving in the UK that I was able to utilise skills that I had learned as a kid and feel like what I knew was valued.” 

Scouts are putting more focus than ever on welcoming people of all backgrounds and opening new sections in Britain’s most deprived areas. At the time of Fields’s appointment, Scouts had a target of having 5% of their 150,000 adult volunteers from ethnic minority backgrounds. 

“I think most communities that have Scout groups in them are strong communities. They tend to be communities where people feel like they’re part of something. 

“It’s about kindness. There’s very little that’s different among seven- or eight- or 12-year-old kids. Scouts focuses on what we have in common, and that’s what we build on. It’s a basic human duty to be kind to your fellow human being.” 

This uplifting view of the world is striking, as Dwayne Fields has experienced the worst of humanity as often as the best. He was stabbed while helping a friend film a media project aged 19, became homeless aged 20, and was shot at aged 21 – the moment he says “changed everything”. It came after the moped he had built from scratch with his brother was stolen by a group from a nearby estate. In blind fury, Fields went to retrieve it despite a violent rivalry between the neighbourhoods. When he grabbed the moped, one of the thieves drew a gun and shot at him twice. Fields only survived because it misfired.  

Retaliation wasn’t just an option for Fields. Living in an area consumed by territorial violence, it was expected. But for him, being shot at was the moment he vowed to forge his own path.   

What allowed him to let go where so many others couldn’t? Fields believes it was his time in Scouts.  

“It made me feel like I had something valuable or valid to say, and it gave me some confidence. I carried much of that through the rest of my life. In that moment where I could have gone down the wrong path, I had just enough confidence to say do you know what? I’m going to do this because that’s the right thing to do.” 

He explains that youth groups are crucial to saving many more kids like him from trouble, especially knife crime, as nearly 20% of offences are committed by under 18s.    

“Scouts isn’t there to take the knife away from a young person. It’s there to reach them and hopefully help them to gain the confidence, the skills and the belief in themselves to say I’m not going to pick one up in malice in the first place. They need to see their peers doing well, speaking positively and being capable of saying, actually, maybe I don’t need to do that.” 

The Chief Scout has led by example, taking on extreme challenges to show people in his area that there was an alternative to violence. In 2010, he became the first Black Briton to trek to the North Pole, raising £23,000 by himself to do so.  

“I did it despite people telling me it was a nonsense, it’s not worth doing, it’s not going to change anything. If I’ve had all these negative experiences just to be quiet in a corner somewhere, it’s an absolute waste. I think these things have happened so others can learn from it and take something from my experience. That gives me hope.” 

Reaching one pole was just the beginning. In 2023, Dwayne Fields joined TV presenter Ben Fogle in Endurance: Race to the Pole, where the pair followed in the footsteps of Shackleton and other Antarctic explorers. The expedition was filmed for Channel 5, receiving a Bafta nomination. A follow-up in which Fields and Fogle retrace the journey of Victorian explorers searching for the source of the Nile is coming soon. 

On Boxing Day last year, Fields was guest editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and hosted Big Issue founder John Bird as a guest. 

He has also found time to set up the WeTwo Foundation, which takes underprivileged kids on their very
own adventures. 

“As a kid, I was raised by my great grandmother,” he says. “She was somebody who was very much part of the community that we lived in, and I think we need to recreate that as much as possible. We all have a responsibility for the world and the places we live.” 

At the moment, Dwayne Fields’s top priority is recruiting new Scout leaders and volunteers. He recently launched a campaign calling for employers to give their staff 35 hours of volunteering leave per year. His own story highlights how giving your time can change others’ lives, but there are other benefits too. In a National Council for Voluntary Organisations survey, more than three-quarters of volunteers said the experience improved their mental health.   

“You build your confidence. You’re building friendships, lifelong friendships. You’re building stronger communities,” Fields explains.  

“All the skills that you learn within Scouts, you can go off and use in your work or in your personal life. It’s great for you. It’s great for the young people. It’s great for the community as well. It’s just win, win, win.” 

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