RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

More than two mil­lion scouts from around the world, in­clud­ing troops in T&T, con­verged for the Scout’s largest vir­tu­al Jam­boree, con­duct­ed on­line yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Na­pari­ma Dis­trict Scout Com­mis­sion­er Vin­cent Ra­moutar said the Jam­boree not on­ly pro­vid­ed a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for young scouts to con­nect but al­so en­abled them to bridge the ge­o­graph­i­cal di­vide and reach out to their coun­ter­parts in war-torn re­gions, in­clud­ing Pales­tine.

He said the an­nu­al event nur­tured glob­al cit­i­zen­ship.

This year, at Debe Sec­ondary School, six troops from the Na­pari­ma and South West Dis­tricts in­clud­ing Cedar Grove Cub Pack, First Pe­nal Sea Scouts, 31st Trinidad Sea Scouts, Third Debe Scout Pack, Pe­nal Ad­ven­tur­ers, First Point Fortin AS­JA Scouts and Sons of Pi­o­neer Scouts en­gaged in a di­verse ar­ray of ac­tiv­i­ties that in­clud­ed mas­ter­ing wire­less ra­dio tech­niques and delv­ing in­to the in­tri­ca­cies of elec­tron­ics.

Ra­moutar said they were for­tu­nate to con­nect with Pales­tin­ian scout troops, de­spite the for­mi­da­ble lan­guage bar­ri­ers.

“Briefly we were able to ask how they were there, and what they need­ed. Most of the scouts un­der­stood vague­ly. They are not in a good state but they were still able to par­tic­i­pate in the ac­tiv­i­ties,” he re­vealed.

Ra­moutar ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges of dis­cussing the on­go­ing con­flict but em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of sol­i­dar­i­ty.

“They didn’t men­tion much about the war. We tried to ask how they were deal­ing with it, but be­cause of the lan­guage bar­ri­er, we could not gath­er much.”

He added, “The lit­tle bit we got was there is a lot of vi­o­lence, first aid need­ed, lots are in­jured and seek­ing as­sis­tance. Not much they can do on their own, but as­sis­tance is be­ing ren­dered to them via the or­gan­i­sa­tions on their side.”

Ra­moutar al­so high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of in­te­grat­ing tech­nol­o­gy in­to the scout­ing cur­ricu­lum, teach­ing young­sters re­spon­si­ble on­line be­hav­iour. “We want to teach them they can be re­spon­si­ble on so­cial me­dia and on­line plat­forms. They are ben­e­fit­ing from this ex­pe­ri­ence as they are learn­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate with re­spect and in­tegri­ty. There is a lot of cy­ber vi­o­lence and cy­ber­bul­ly­ing in our na­tion’s schools. The prob­lem with that is there is not much mon­i­tor­ing go­ing on to stop it,” he added.

He not­ed that the scout move­ment is ded­i­cat­ed to in­still­ing pos­i­tive on­line be­hav­iour and guid­ing scouts on how to use the in­ter­net for mar­ket­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­de­pen­dent­ly.

He al­so thanked Dig­i­cel for gen­er­ous­ly pro­vid­ing free in­ter­net ac­cess for 24 hours to fa­cil­i­tate the on­line Jam­boree.