Scouting continues despite impact of pandemic

EVEN though the impact of COVID-19 has been significant, Trevor Jones, Chief Commissioner of the Barbados Boy Scouts Association, has stated that the entity has adapted and made improvements overall.

Due to the arrival of the pandemic on the shores of the island, life changed significantly for the scouts, according to Jones. He explained that most groups could no longer meet physically, activities were limited and with increasing unemployment because of the initial island lockdown, more and more members were unable to be subs, even if there was a physical meeting.

Further shedding light on the situation, Jones stated that fund-raising also ground to a halt and scouting as they knew it ground to a halt on the district, national, regional and international levels.

“However, like true scouts, we rose to the challenge and found new ways to scout in a rapidly changing environment. The movement has been adapting over the last year to ensure that we are able to deliver our programme to our youth members,” said Jones.

The Chief Commissioner went on to say that each association had to adapt and manage their programmes to meet the changing needs of the communities while complying with the government protocols where they resided.

One of the moves made on the group level is that most groups have been meeting virtually to conduct activities, allowing them to meet and work with their members.

“This has not been easy as transforming a mostly physical and team-based programme to a virtual one requires a level of creativity most of us did not consider before,” acknowledged Jones.

Online resources

He highlighted the effort of the World Organisation of Scout Movement (WOSM) to make a number of resources available online early in the pandemic and now an increasing number of resources were consolidated under the scoutship. The comprehensive, fully online resource is available to all the leaders of each national association, free of cost.

Despite this, Chief Commissioner Jones identified that there was still the unfortunate situation where some groups have been unable to start meeting virtually due to a lack of access to equipment, a stable Internet connection or technical skill by some leaders and members. The scout leader said that it was a situation which the scouting world would continue to tackle throughout the rest of the year.

Also referenced was the availability of online training resources for most of the scouting adults, which again are free of cost, no matter the level within the scouting organisation.

“WOSM and the Inter American region have also made available a number of adult training activities, to help strengthen the skills of the adult leadership of the association to better deliver the youth programme and to improve their administrative operations,” said Jones.

The local governing body has encouraged all adults to take advantage of the resource as this type of training is usually done overseas where spaces have been limited. Access to such training is a significant benefit to all those involved to further the level of scouting in Barbados. (AS)