Barbados Boy Scouts rebuilding after COVID years

The Barbados Boy Scouts Association is on a mission to rebuild after the “different” COVID-19 years.

The Association celebrated its 111th anniversary with a church service on Sunday afternoon at the Abundant Life Assembly in Bank Hall, St Michael, and chief commissioner Trevor Jones said there was no going back to the way it used to be.

Chief commissioner of the Barbados Boy Scouts Association Trevor Jones. (Picture by Shanice King)

“This last year has been different, that’s the best word I could think of to describe it. Difficult, challenging or hard didn’t seem to quite cut it. Different in the sense we started the year with limited protocols . . . We started with restrictions at schools, most of which have been removed now and the list goes on,” he said.

“By the time the new school year had started in September, most schools had returned to a sense of normalcy, regular classes and a return to extracurricular activities on the compound. Many of us thought that once schools reopened, everything would have returned to normal, we would pick up where we left off in March 2020 and  continue as if the previous two-and-a-half years did not happen, but that was wishful thinking.”

Instead, said Jones, they were faced with a new set of challenges. Many scouts were no longer engaging in physical activity, while others had aged out of their respective groups by September 2022 without being replaced as most of the outreach was online.

“Groups who were unable to transition to virtual meetings now had no active members. It is hard to build a group with a few members, much less one with no members,” he pointed out.

Jones said the Barbados Boy Scouts would have to adapt its message and use different approaches to highlight “what we do and why we do it”. (SAT)

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