More than 1 300 participants of youth organisations marched for unity yesterday to commemorate the founding father of their organisations.
Social media content manager for the Girl Guides Association, Margaret Burke, explained that for the first time the Scouts and Guides and their sub groups came together to observe their founding father Lord Baden Powell.
She said his remembrance day is usually celebrated on World Thinking Day, February 22, and instead of coordinating two separate events both associations came together to host one grand celebration, which included a march involving the Girl Guides, Brownies, Girl Scouts, Blossoms, Boy Scouts, Beavers, Ranger and Venture Scouts.
“World Thinking Day is a day recognised across the world as a day of international friendship,” Burke said. “It also highlights the togetherness of the Scouts and Guides so this year we decided to do a rally and incorporate all the groups instead of doing separate events.
“The theme this year is BP spirit: The Thread That Unites Us. It recognises Lord Baden Powell as he founded the Boy Scouts and when the girls wanted to join, he created the Girl Scout movement.
“So this year we want to work together to make our associations better and the nation on a whole.”
Burke said it was important for young people to join youth organisations as they would learn about teamwork, leadership, engage in cross culture activities and acquire new skills.
Venture Scout leader Dwayne Worrell said young boys should join the association to help build their characters. He said there was room for more teenaged boys as the group was attracting younger children, but it was a challenging recruiting adolescent boys because of competition from other areas boys may be interested in.
The children marched with placards of positive messages from the playing field at Passage Road, St Michael, onto Baxter’s Road and Marhill Street. From there they travelled along Roebuck Street and made their way to Harrison College, where they took part in other activities. (SB)
