More than 28-million young people met up, camped out, did good deeds and renewed a vow to do their best at sunrise across the globe on Wednesday as the Scouts celebrated their 100th anniversary.
As part of the ongoing festivities, 40 000 young people from around the world have gathered in southern England to take part in the largest ever 12-day world Scout Jamboree.
On Tuesday morning some local British troop members of the world’s largest co-educational youth movement rose from their sleeping bags near Queen Elizabeth’s Windsor castle to raise the British flag, give the three-fingered Scout salute and recite the Scout promise among the tents and smouldering campfires.
Their tiny celebration reflected ceremonies of Scout troops in over 160 countries.
Romanian Scouts joined hands around their national Parliament and Malawian youths cooked a sunrise breakfast over campfires. In India, some gathered at the Taj Mahal, French Scouts met at the Eiffel Tower and in Australia the Sydney Opera House was the focus of one of the thousands of ”sunrise ceremonies” all held at 8am local times.
”It’s amazing to think that there are so many of us around the world and that everyone is doing something today. It was a magical time,” said 15-year old Matthew Spicer, an explorer scout from east London, as he renewed the Scout promise originally penned by the far-sighted British Boer War hero Robert Baden-Powell.
Upon joining the movement, some from the age of six, boys and girls promise to uphold core Scout values such as trustworthiness, loyalty and to ”do their best”.
Scouting activities happen every day in more than 216 countries and the movement includes England soccer star David Beckham and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney as previous members.
”We get to do all sorts of things that others don’t. In my time I’ve learned how to make fires, been skiing and shooting, and camping in all sorts of places that otherwise I would never have seen,” 18-year-old Scout leader Alex Judd said.
Baden-Powell, who was recently voted the 13th most influential person in the United Kingdom in the 20th century, started the movement in 1907 after the Boer War and following an experimental camp on Brownsea Island, off the south coast of England.
A select band of a few hundred Scouts from around the world celebrated at Baden-Powell’s original campsite this morning, where United Kingdom Chief Scout Peter Duncan blew the enormous Kudu horn at the exact minute 100 years to the day that Baden-Powell first used it to wake the first troop of Scouts on Brownsea.
Scouting for Boys by Baden-Powell, written in 1908, is the fourth biggest selling book in the world after the Bible, the Qu’ran and Mao’s Little Red Book.
According to an entry in Wikipedia Baden-Powell’s sexual orientation has been brought into question by his principal modern biographers.
Even though Baden-Powell married and had three children, circumstantial evidence suggests he may have taken an erotic interest in men and boys. The possibility of a non-heterosexual Baden-Powell has been controversial given his iconic status in Scouting. – Reuters